:• 


ttbe  English  Xibtarg 


INTRODUCTIONS   TO   THE 
POETS 


THE  ENGLISH  LIBRARY. 

Uniform    with    this   Volume. 

How  to  Read  English  Literature  :  Chaucer  to 
Milton.  By  LAURIE  MAGNUS,  M.A. 

How  to   Read  English  Literature  :     Dryden  to 

Meredith.     By  LAURIE  MAGNUS,  M.A. 
Documents      Illustrating      Elizabethan     Poetry 

(Sidney's,  Puttenham's,  and  Webbe's  Treatises).     Edited, 
with  modernized  spelling,  by  LAURIE  MAGNUS,  M.A. 

First  English  Translations  of  the  Great  Foreign 

Classics.    A  supplement  to  Text  Books  of  English  Litera- 
ture, arranged  in  dictionary  form.     By  W.  J.  HARRIS. 

The  Principles  and  Practice  of  Punctuation.  By 
T.  F.  HUSBAND,  M.A. 

On  the  Study  of  Words.  By  Archbishop  R.  C. 
TRENCH.  Edited,  with  Additions,  Emendations,  and 
Index,  by  Dr.  A.  SMYTHE  PALMER. 

English,  Past  and  Present.     By  Archbishop  R.  C. 

TRENCH.     Edited,    with    Additions,   Emendations,    and 
Index,  by  Dr.  A.  SMYTHE  PALMER. 

Proverbs  and  their  Lessons.  By  Archbishop 
R.  C.  TRENCH.  With  Notes,  Bibliography,  and  Index, 
by  Dr.  A.  SMYTHE  PALMER. 

Select  Glossary  of  English  Words  :  used  formerly 
in  senses  different  from  their  present,  By  Archbishop 
TRENCH.  Edited  by  Dr.  A.  SMYTHE  PALMER. 

Curios  from  a  Word-Collector's  Cabinet.  By 
Dr.  A.  SMYTHE  PALMER. 

The  Folk  and  their  Word-Lore  :  an  Essay  on 
Popular  Etymologies.  By  Dr.  A.  SMYTHE  PALMER. 

GEORGE  ROUTLEDGE  &  SONS,  LIMITED. 


INTRODUCTIONS 
TO  THE  POETS 

By 
W.  F.  RAWNSLEY,  M.A 


LONDON 

GEORGE  ROUTLEDGE  &  SONS,  LIMITED 

NEW  YORK:    E.  P.   BUTTON  &  CO 

1912 


Dedication. 

TO 

MRS.    F.    GREENE, 

OF      RYDINGHURST,     CRANLEIGH, 

THE    ORIGINATOR    AND    PRESIDING    GENII'S 

OF    OUR    LITERARY    SOCIETY. 


28700 


PREFACE 

Ix  the  following  introductions  to  the  Poets  the 
Author  lays  no  great  claim  to  originality.  As 
Hon.  Secretary  of  a  Literary  Society  started  for 
the  encouragement  of  those  who  cared  for  poetry 
and  wished  to  improve  their  acquaintance  with 
it,  he  thought  that  it  would  greatly  add  to  the 
usefulness  of  the  friendly  afternoon  meetings  in 
one  another's  houses  if  each  first  reading  of  a  Poet's 
works  were  prefaced  by  some  account  of  the  Poet 
himself,  his  life  and  circumstances,  and  the  his- 
tory of  his  work.  These  accounts  are  in  most 
cases  a  digest  of  what  had  been  already  published 
by  various  writers,  with  such  added  criticism  as 
seemed  likely  to  be  of  use  or  interest.  And  they 
are  usually  short,  as  the  writer  always  felt  that 
he  was  somewhat  tyrannically  taking  up  the  time 
of  the  Members  whose  object  was  to  read  or  listen 
to  the  poems  selected  and  discuss  them  afterwards. 
In  preparing  the  papers  for  the  Press  they  have 
been  in  some  instances  enlarged  and  poems  have 
been  inserted  which  at  the  Meetings  were  read 
after  the  paper.  Of  the  Browning  paper,  only  the 


ii  Preface 

first  part  has  been  read.  That  on  Tennyson  dif- 
fers from  all  the  rest  in  that  it  is  written  entirely 
from  personal  knowledge.  It  is  longer  than  the 
others,  and  is  in  fact  a  lecture  which  the  Author 
was  invited  to  deliver  on  the  occasion  of  the  Tenny- 
son Centenary  in  1909,  but  having  been  by  request 
read  at  one  of  the  Literary  Society's  Meetings  it 
has  been  included  in  the  present  volume. 

The  Society  for  which  the  Papers  were  written 
was  formed  in  October  1905.  It  consists  of  some 
thirty  members,  with  an  average  attendance  of 
about  half  the  number.  Its  period  of  activity 
is  seven  months  of  the  year,  from  October  to 
December  and  from  February  to  May  inclusive, 
with  an  occasional  meeting  in  January  and  June. 
During  the  six  years  of  its  life  it  has  held  fifty- 
eight  meetings,  averaging  one  in  every  three  weeks. 
The  "  Subjects  "  have  been  twenty  in  number, 
of  which  Browning  and  Tennyson  have  been  the 
most  constantly  recurring — in  fact  out  of  the 
fifty-eight  those  two  have  taken  up  one  half, 
Browning  eighteen  and  Tennyson  eleven  ;  the 
remaining  half  being  distributed  thus  :— 

SHAKESPEARE  4.  Richard  II,  Hamlet 

two  readings,  and 
Henry  VIII. 

SPENSER  3.  The  Faerie  Queen,  Book 

I.  two  readings,  and 
The  Minor  Poems. 


Preface 


in 


MILTON 


CHAUCER 


SHELLEY 

2. 

WORDSWORTH 

2. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

2, 

GRAY 

I. 

BURNS 

I. 

COLERIDGE 

I. 

KEATS 

I. 

BYRON 

I. 

LONGFELLOW 

I. 

G.  ROSSETTI 

I. 

CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI 

I. 

SWINBURNE 

I. 

3.  The  Minor  Poems. 
Comus,  and  the  ist 
half  of  Paradise  Lost. 

2.  The  Prologue  to  The 
Tales,  The  Prioress's 
Tale,  and  some  short 
Poems,  and  2ndly 
"  The  Nonne  Preestes 
Tale." 


one  being  Sohrab  and 
Rustum. 


Childe  Harold. 


Atalanta  in  Calydon. 
THE  ARTHURIAN  LEGEND. 
OLD  BALLADS. 

Of  these  Chaucer  and  the  minor  poems  of  Spen- 
ser were  to  many  almost  a  new  discovery.  But 
the  greatest  revelation  of  all  was  Swinburne's 
Atalanta  in  Calydon.  In  this  fine  poem  the  lyric 
beauty  of  the  choruses  and  the  excellence  of  the 


iv  Preface 

blank  verse  are  only  surpassed  by  the  tragic  pathos 
of  the  story.  The  conflict  between  the  love  of 
her  brothers,  a  feeling  so  strong  in  every  Greek 
breast,  and  the  natural  affection  for  her  own  off- 
spring so  finely  depicted  in  the  Mother's  recollec- 
tions of  her  first-born  baby  son,  a  conflict  which 
at  last  gives  way,  when  too  late,  in  a  storm  of 
regret  over  the  terrible  deed  of  her  own  hands,  is 
treated  with  the  greatest  skill ;  and  the  sorrow 
that  the  hero  expresses  at  the  loss  of  all  this  plea- 
sant life,  and  that  not  in  battle  or  by  the  chances 
of  the  hunt,  but  in  the  house  and  by  his  own 
mother's  act,  and  the  affectionate  way  in  which, 
notwithstanding,  he  makes  excuses  for  her  when 
he  is  dying,  make  up  a  tragedy  of  the  most  moving 
character.  It  was  curious,  after  reading  it,  to  see 
what  a  failure  the  play  proved  on  the  stage.  There 
the  chanting  of  the  choruses  quite  obscured  the 
beauty  of  the  language,  and  all  the  charm  of 
Swinburne's  melodious  verse.  Then  Atalanta's 
great  speech,  so  touching  and  beautiful  to  read, 
became  a  mere  stage  declamation,  while  the 
poem  supplied  no  dramatic  situations  to  relieve 
the  long  speeches  of  one  character  after  another. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE     ........          i 

THE  ARTHURIAN  LEGEND     .....         i 

OLD  BALLADS      .......         4 

CHAUCER     n 

SPENSER     ........       22 

MILTON       ........       34 

INTRODUCTION  TO  "  COMUS  "  .          .          .48 

GRAY 55 

BURNS         ........       67 

S.  T.  COLERIDGE 93 

BYRON'S  CHILDE  HAROLD 124 

SHELLEY     .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .129 

KEATS         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .148 

WORDSWORTH      .          .          .          .          .          .          .172 

LONGFELLOW 196 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD       .         .         .         .         .         .203 

D.  G.  ROSSETTI 211 

CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI 214 

R.  BROWNING     .         .         .         .         .         .         .218 

TENNYSON 243 


THE  ARTHURIAN  LEGEND 

CHRONOLOGICAL   LIST  OF  ARTHURIAN 
WRITERS 


AUTHOR. 

WORK. 

DATE. 

Geoffrey  of  Mon- 

Historic*  Regum  Britin- 

1140  (about) 

mouth 

niae 

Wace        .      .      . 

French   translation    of 

1155 

Geoffrey 

Chrestien  de 

Various    legends  :    es- 

1150 to  1182 

Troyes 

pecially     Conte     du 

Graal  (unfinished) 

Layamon 

Brut  d'Angleterre    . 

1200  (about) 

Walter  Map  .      . 

Sangreal,    Lancelot    du 

1190  to  1215 

Lac.    Roman    de    la 

Mort  Artus. 

Malory     .      .      . 

Le  Mort  D'  Arthur  .      . 

1480  (about) 

Printed  by  Caxton  in 

1485 

THE  Golden  Age  of  "  Chivalry  "  was  from  the 
middle  of  the  eleventh  to  about  the  beginning  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  or,  to  put  it  better,  between 
the  Norman  Conquest  and  the  Battle  of  Agincourt. 

It  was  not  till  the  twelfth  century  that  Geoffrey 
of  Monmouth  wrote  his  Tales  of  King  Arthur 
and  the  Round  Table,  which  were  the  source  of 
much  romantic  poetry  in  this  period  and  after- 
wards. 

In  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  the  "  Trou- 
veres  "  of  the  North  of  France,  who  were  the  off- 


2  introductions  to  the  Poets 

spring  01  rue''  Tro^baJcrrs' 'of  Provence,  travelled 
to  England  and  sang  in  court  and  castle  the 
doughty  deeds  of  Alexander,  Charlemagne,  the 
Norman  Roland,  Havelok  the  Dane,  Richard 
Cceur  de  Lion,  Guy  of  Warwick  and  King  Arthur 
and  his  Knights. 

In  1205  Layamon,  a  Worcestershire  monk,  who 
was  the  first  Englishman  who  wrote  in  his  native 
tongue,  finished  his  translation  of  the  Brut  d'An- 
gleterre — a  Metrical  Chronicle  of  England  in 
Norman  French — which  the  Norman  writer  Wace 
had  founded  on  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth's  prose 
stories  of  Arthur.  Layamon  introduced  some 
Welsh  stories,  unknown  to  Geoffrey,  and  his 
poem  reaches  to  32,000  lines.  Certainly  he  was 
the  first  to  sing  of  King  Arthur  in  English  as  dis- 
tinct from  pure  Saxon  Verse  (see  Early  Philology 
of  the  English  Tongues,  p.  48,  extract  from  Laya- 
mon). So  we  may  call  him  the  first  English  poet, 
Caedmon  and  Cynewulf  in  the  seventh  and 
eighth  centuries  being  Saxon. 

German  Mediaeval  poetry  of  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries  is  divided  by  Schlegel  into 
three  groups  : — 

(1)  The   Legends   concerning   Gothic,   Prankish 
and  Burgundian  warriors,  such  as  are  treated  in  the 
thirteenth   century   in   the   Nibelungen-lied   and 
in  "The  Hero  Book." 

These  legends  have  usually,  but  not  necessarily, 
an  historical  foundation. 

(2)  The  Chivalrous   poetry  which  took   Charle- 
magne for  its  topic.     In  this,  History  gets  more  and 
more  overlaid  with  fable  and  even  at  last  with 
comic  humour. 


The  Arthurian  Legend  3 

(3)  The  Stories  of  the  British  Arthur  and  the 
Round  Table.  Here  the  German  singers  have  to 
do  with  a  Christian  King  of  Celtic  origin  in  Britain, 
who  was  destined  to  represent  the  ideal  of  perfect 
chivalry  and  knightly  virtue.  But  amongst  these 
poems  we  frequently  find  love  introduced,  and  some 
of  these  love  poems  have  a  plaintive  Elegiac 
sadness  of  character,  as  in  Tristram  and  Isolt. 
(His  very  name  indicates  this.)  Often  again  the 
ideal  knight,  whether  Arthur,  Lancelot,  Amidio 
of  Gaul  or  Palmenne  of  England,  is  a  glorified 
counterpart  of  some  real  men  whose  deeds  are 
recounted  in  Froissart's  Chronicle,  e.g.  The  Black 
Prince  or  Sir  Walter  of  Manny,  or  Sir  John  Chan- 
dos  and,  finally,  this  group  has  often  a  peculiarly 
allegorical  character,  especially  in  the  San  Graal 
Series,  which  embodies  the  conception  of  a  Spiritual 
Knighthood.  This  resulted  from  the  influence  of 
the  Crusades  of  the  twelfth  century,  which  Gibbon 
says  were  both  a  cause  and  an  effect  of  Chivalry. 
Certainly  the  Crusades  aroused  the  imagination, 
while  the  Crusaders  also  brought  back  from  the 
East  Persian  and  Arabian  tales  which  are  the 
creations  of  a  more  exuberant  fancy  than  belongs 
to  the  peoples  of  the  West.  Of  this  third  group 
The  Arthurian  legend  became  in  the  thirteenth 
century  a  prodigious  favourite  in  Germany. 

The  name  Arthur  probably  has  the  same  signifi- 
cation as  Pendragon,  which  means  Caput  Regum, 
Ardheer  or  Ardhreg  (=  The  Arviragus  of  Juvenal) 
meaning  summus  Rex. 

Cassibelan  was  chosen  "  Pendragon  "  at  the  time 
of  Julius  Caesar's  invasion  and  we  hear  of  both 
Arthur  Pendragon  and  Uther  Pendragon. 


OLD  BALLADS 

THE  Ballad,  which  has  been  called  the  nugget  or 
uncoined  gold  of  British  poetry,  is  both  in  name 
and  origin  a  dance-song,  i.e.  a  song  to  dance  to,  the 
word  being  connected  with  the  Low  Latin  and 
Italian  Ballare,  Greek  /3a\\i£eiv,  and  French 
bailer,  meaning  to  dance.  The  English  "  ball " 
meaning  a  dance  is  from  the  French  bal,  of  which 
our  word  ballet  is  a  diminutive.  All  ballad  forms 
are  said  to  have  come  originally  from  Italy  and 
through  France  to  England  whence  they  spread  to 
Scandinavia  and  Germany.  In  Iceland  a  "  danz  " 
means  a  song ;  and  as  song  and  dance  went 
together,  the  same  word  did  for  both. 

The  Ballad  at  first  had  a  refrain,  a  chorus  imitat- 
ive of  the  clapping  of  hands  in  Spanish  dances 
and  in  some  of  our  own  country  dances  at  certain 
recurring  points  in  the  dance.  For  instances  of 
how  the  clapping  would  come  in  with  the  beats  of 
the  refrain  take  the  ballad  of  Mary  Ambree. 

Was  not  this  a  brave  bonny  lasse,  Mary  Ambree  ? 
O  what  a  brave  captaine  was  Mary  Ambree  ! 

P.  R.,  1.399- 

where  every  fourth  line  (like  the  two  just  quoted) 
represents  four  claps  of  the  hand.  Or  the  Eliza- 
bethan ballad  The  Beggar's  Daughter  of  Bednall 
Green,  with  its  recurring  burden  with  four  beats  in 
every  fourth  line. 


Old  Ballads  5 

For  none  was  so  comely  as  pretty  "Besse, 

Soe  faire  and  well  favoured  was  pretty  Bessee. 

Or  take  The  Lykewake  Dirge,  where  every  second 
line  represents  three  claps  of  the  hand.  See  the 
last  piece  in  Bell's  Golden  Book  of  ballads. 

This  se  night  the  ae  nighte, 

Every  nights  and  alle, 
Fire  and  sleet  and  candle  lighte, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

When  thou  from  hence  away  art  past, 

Every  nighte  and  allc, 
To  Whinnie  Muir  thou  com'st  at  last  ; 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

This  is  similar  in  its  beats  to  the  old  song,  London 
Bridge  is  broken  down,  and  its  meaningless  refrain 
"  with  a  gay  Izdee."  In  The  Nut-brown  Mayd  the 
last  two  lines  of  each  stanza  make  seven  beats. 


For  in  my  minde  of  all 
T  love  but  you  aloue  ; 

P.  R.,  1.361. 

and  another  round  or  Dance  Song  with  a  well- 
known  refrain  of  seven  beats  is  A  Frog  he  would 
a  wooing  go,  which  has  seven  beats  — 

With  a  roley  poley  gammon  and  spinach 
Heigh  ho  says  Awtony  Rowley. 

The  very  fact  that  these  refrains  are  meaning- 
less shows  that  the  claps  of  the  hands  were  all  that 
was  needed  or  listened  for  and  where  no  words 
were  needed  any  words  would  do. 

The  old  French  word  rondel  is  in  English  Roundel 
or  Round,  and  its  diminutive  rondelet  is  in  English 
Roundelay,  the  spelling  "  lay  "  being  a  confusion 
from  the  word  "  lay  "  which  means  a  song  and  is 
possibly  akin  to  the  German  '  '  lied,  '  '  and  this  Rondel 


6  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

or  round  means  a  song  in  which  a  verse  keeps  on 
coming  round  again  and  again,  just  as  in  the  early 
ballad.  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  often  the  cus- 
tom that  the  dancing  and  singing  of  these  rounds 
took  place  in  the  churchyard,  which  brought  them 
into  contact  and  opposition  with  the  strong  puritan 
element  in  Catholicism,  and  hence  perhaps  the 
decline  of  the  ballad,  which  in  England  flourished 
chiefly  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  century. 
The  ballads  were  handed  down  orally  as  was  the 
case  with  the  first  poetry  of  all  nations,  and  many 
repetitions  and  variations  crept  into  them.  Those 
that  we  have  in  the  Percy  reliques  are  mostly  of 
the  fifteenth  century  and  onwards,  for  the  Street 
ballad,  as  distinguished  from  the  dance  ballad, 
came  in  later,  and  is  a  narrative  in  simple  verse. 
Of  course  the  ballad  surviving  through  several 
centuries,  has  undergone  various  transformations 
and  the  name  has  been  given  to  pieces  which  are 
in  no  sense  ballads  either  in  subject,  extent  or 
character ;  for  the  character  should  be  simple  and 
popular,  and  was  often  rude  in  style,  the  extent 
short,  containing  only  one  episode,  and  the  subject 
some  valorous  deed  or  some  tragic  or  touching 
story.  Moreover  it  should  be  adapted  to  be  sung 
or  accompanied  musically.  When  expanded,  the 
ballad  became  a  lay,  e.g.  Scott's  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel  or  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome, 
where,  as  in  the  modern  German  ballads  descrip- 
tions of  scenery  and  much  dialogue  are  conspicuous. 
The  chief  German  ballad  writers  are  Burger  with 
his  Leonore,  Schiller,  Goethe  with  the  Erl  Konig, 
and  Uhland. 

In  Italy  even  in  the  twelfth  century  madrigals 


Old  Ballads  7 

and  lyrical  love  songs  were  called  ballads  :  and 
in  so  far  as  the  ballad  was  a  narrative  it  was 
the  parent  of  the  earlier  epics  ;  and  the  greatest 
heroic  poems,  such  as  the  Spanish  "  Cid  "  and  the 
German  "  Nibelungen  "  grew  out  of  this  beginning. 
The  best  of  our  ballads  are  the  Border  Ballads. 
The  Battle  of  Otterbourne,  which  begins — 

It  fell  about  the  Lammasse  tyde, 

tells  of  a  border  raid,  for  booty,  not  a  hunting 
expedition,  and  describes  the  battle  which  was 
fought  in  1388,  in  the  reign  of  Richard  II  and 
in  the  lifetime  of  Chaucer. 

The  Ancient  Ballad  of  Chevy  Chase,  which  means 
the  hunting  on  the  Cheviot,  was  written  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  VI,  two  generations  later.  It 
begins — 

The  Perse  out  of  Northumberlande, 

and  the  writer  mixes  up  the  details  of  the  fight  at 
Otterbourne  with  the  account  of  a  border  hunting 
raid. 

Another  version  called  The  More  Modern  Ballad 
of  Chevy  Chase  was  Elizabethan.  This  is  the 
one  usually  read  and  it  begins — 

God  prosper  long  our  noble  King. 

Other  good  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  century 
ballads  are  Fair  Helen  of  Kirk-Connell  Lee,  Sir 
Patrick  Spens,  William  of  Cloudesley  and  The  Nut- 
browne  Maya  and  later  in  date  The  Gentle  Herdsman 
(which  is  Goldsmith's  model  for  his  beautiful 
ballad  Edwin  and  Angelina  and  The  Friar  of 
Orders  Grey. 

Of  quite  modern  times  Scott's  Young  Lochinvar, 


8  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

The  Rime  of  the  Ancient  Mariner  by  Coleridge  and 
The  Ballad  of  the  Revenge  by  Tennyson  are  the  most 
notable  things  of  this  kind,  and  the  stirring  "  Bar- 
rack-room Ballad  "  East  and  West  by  Rudyard 
Kipling.  Some  ballads  deal  with  magic,  but  many 
of  the  early  English  and  Scottish  ballads  have 
mostly  to  do  with  love  and  rapine  and  the  barbar- 
ous deeds  of  border  strife  and  are  not  always 
pleasant  reading.  The  most  notable  of  these  are 
Clerk  Saunders,  Edom  0'  Gordon  and  Edward 
Edward.  But  by  degrees  the  ballad  got  more 
refined  in  taste,  till,  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  it  attained  a  sudden  perfection  in  the 
hands  of  Chaucer,  and  from  this  the  advance  to 
Elizabethan  lyric  was  easy. 

The  ballad,  if  long,  was  divided  into  parts  called 
'  fytts,'  and  spelt  indifferently  fit,  fitt,  fyt,  fytt, 
fytte.  Fit  I.— part  I.  But  it  is  the  same  word 
that  we  use  in  the  expression  "  by  fits  and  starts/' 
i.e.  pauses  and  fresh  starts.  A  long  ballad,  for  the 
convenience  of  singing  it,  at  a  feast  or  public  enter- 
tainment, was  sung  by  fits  or  interruptions. 

Puttenham,  in  his  Art  of  English  Poesie,  1589, 
says  that  "  the  Epithalamie  was  divided  by 
breaches  into  three  parts  to  serve  for  three  several 
fits  or  times  to  be  sung." 

In  the  ancient  ballad  of  Chevy  Chase — 

The  first  fit  I  here  find, 

means  here  I  come  to  the  first  pause  or  intermission, 
and  so,  after  the  first  112  lines  of  The  Battle  of 
Otterbourne,  we  find  the  words  "  A  Fytte."  By 
degrees  the  term  came  to  mean  the  whole  part  pre- 
ceding the  pause,  and  this  had  become  its  meaning 


Old  Ballads  9 

as  early  as  Chaucer's  time  (the  fourteenth  century), 
for  in  his  Rhyme  of  Sir  Thopas  he  says — 

Lo,  Lordes  myne,  heer  is  a  fit ! 
If  ye  wish  any  more  of  it, 

To  telle  it  wol  I  fonde.  (=try)  ; 

and  in  the  ballad  of  Adam  Bell,  Clym  o  the  Clough 
and  William  Cloudeslie  Part  I  ends  with — 

Here  is  a  fyt  of  Cloudeslie, 
And  another  is  for  to  saye; 

and  Part  II  with— 

A  second  fyt  of  the  mightie  yeoman  : 
Another  I  wyll  you  tell. 


BALLADS  SELECTED  FOR  READING 

From  vol.  i.  of  Percy's  Reliques  of  Ancient  British 

Poetry.     Published  by  G.  Bell  &  Sons,  1878. 
Page       3.  Fit   I   of    The  Ancient  Ballad  of    Chevy 
Chase    (fourteenth    century)  ;    part  II 
of  The  more  modern  do.  (fifteenth  cen- 
tury), p.  i 80. 

,,       41.  Edward  Edward.     A  Scottish  Ballad. 

,,  54.  Sir  Patrick  Spens.  [Ballad  Book,  p.  60, 
but  a  better  version  is  in  the  Oxford 
Book  of  Verse.} 

,,       80.  Edom  0'  Gordon. 

,,  106.  Parts  of  Adam  Bell,  Clym  o'  the  Clough 
and  William  Cloudesley. 

,,  139.  Take  thy  old  Cloak  about  thee.  Cf.  Shake- 
speare's Othello. 

,,     208.  My  mind  to  me  a  Kingdom  is. 

,,  265.  The  Nut-browne  Mayd.  (Part  of),  six- 
teenth century. 

»     337-  The  Heir  of  Linne. 

„     302.  Gentle  Herdsman,  tell  to  me. 


io  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Page  176.  The  Friar  of  Orders  Grey. 

This  on  which  the  Bailiff's  Daughter 
of  Islington  is  founded — is  made  up 
of  bits  from  Shakespeare  and  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher. 
Compare  also  p.  129  for  the  grave- 
digger's  song  in  Hamlet,  Act  v., 
and  p.  130  for  Jephthah  Judge  of 
Israel.  Hamlet  ii.  7. 

From  The  Ballad  Booh,  Golden  Treasury  Series. 
Page       i.  Thomas  the  Rhymer. 
,,         4.  The  Twa  Corbies. 
,,       95.  The  Jolly  Goshawk. 
,,     115.  Fair  Annie  of  Lochroyan. 
,,      121.  The  Lihewake  Dirge. 
,,     356.  Helen  of  Kirkconnell  Lea. 
,,     211.  Kinmont  Willy. 

,,     144.   Young  Beichan.     Compare  with  this  Lord 
Bate-man's  Daughter,  by  Thackeray. 


CHAUCER 

1340-1400 

LOWELL  holds  that  the  Anglo-Saxons  never  had 
a  real  literature  of  their  own ;  they  produced 
monkish  chronicles  and  legends  of  saints,  but  their 
poetry  was  essentially  Scandinavian.  It  was 
through  the  Normans  that  the  English  mind  was 
first  inspired  with  the  grace  and  lightness  of  Roman- 
tic literature.  The  Troubadours  of  Provence, 
taught  by  the  Moors  who  had  themselves  imbibed 
something  of  culture  from  the  Greeks,  first  showed 
that  songs  could  be  made  in  the  tongue  of  the 
country  people,  but  their  style  soon  left  the  pro- 
vincial and  popular  form  to  become  the  highly 
artificial  mouthpiece  of  chivalry  ;  and  it  was  their 
Northern  French  or  Norman  offspring,  the  Trouveres 
singing  with  a  vigour  which  smacks  of  the  soil  and 
is  not  free  from  a  certain  native  coarseness,  whom 
we  must  regard  as  the  true  originators  of  our 
modern  literature.  For  the  literary  existence  of 
all  languages  dates  from  its  early  poetry.  It  is 
the  taking  hold  of  the  speech  of  the  people,  using 
and  refining  it  and  thus  revealing  its  power,  that  is 
the  proper  \vwrk  of  the  poets.  No  poet  did  more 
in  this  way  than  Chaucer. 

Now,   poetry    flourishes  most,   when,   for  one 

reason  or  another,  there  is  an  exalted  state  of 
11 


12  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

national  feeling.  Hence  the  poetic  outbursts  in 
the  time  of  Edward  III,  Queen  Elizabeth,  the 
Commonwealth,  Queen  Ann  and  Queen  Victoria. 

In  the  time  of  Edward  III  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
English  nation  had  been  brought  to  its  highest 
pitch  by  the  ambition  of  the  king  to  seize  the 
crown  of  France  ;  and  never  did  the  pulse  of  a 
nation  beat  higher  than  at  the  news  of  the  victories 
of  Crecy  and  Poitiers,  A.D.  1346  and  1356. 

The  times  of  Chaucer  were  also  stirring  in  the 
annals  of  the  Church — the  first  great  Reformer 
was  his  contemporary,  and  by  Wiclif  the  Bible 
was  brought  from  the  sepulchre  of  a  dead  language 
and  made  a  living  book  in  England.  It  is  thought 
that  Chaucer  was  writing  with  his  eye  on  Wiclif 
when  he  described  the  poor  Parson  in  his  prologue 
to  the  Tales. 

The  times  moreover  were  not  without  signs  of 
civil  convulsion,  and  produced  the  first  struggles 
of  the  peasants  and  serfs  of  England  for  some 
beginnings  of  liberty  and  individuality. 

This  was  the  condition  of  the  times  in  England 
when  Chaucer  appeared. 

Abroad  Dante  was  Chaucer's  one  great  precursor 
in  Europe.  Born  a  century  before  Chaucer — 1265 
—he  died  at  the  age  of  56  in  1321,  nineteen  years 
before  Chaucer  was  born,  leaving  Petrarch  a  youth 
of  17  who  died  at  the  age  of  70  when  Chaucer  was 
34.  Both  poets,  Dante  and  Chaucer,  had  similar 
opportunities  of  culture,  and  as  Dante  had  in  his 
veins  some  Northern  Teutonic  blood  adding  a 
strength  to  his  moral  sense,  so  Chaucer  had  possi- 
bly some  Southern  blood  which  gave  an  elegance 
remarkable  and  unprecedented  to  his  tongue ; 


Chaucer  13 

but  their  subjects  are  different ;  Dante's  subject 
is  the  Soul — Chaucer's  is  Life ;  subjects  not 
antagonistic  but  \vide  apart  as  holiness  and  pru- 
dence. Hence  Dante  is  a  universal,  Chaucer  a 
national  poet. 

With  the  exception  of  Langland — author  of 
Piers  Ploughman  and  author  of  that  beautiful 
thought  Mercy  is  sib  of  all  sinful — Chaucer's  pre- 
decessors in  England  were  versifiers  and  not  poets, 
their  subjects  were  classic  or  mediaeval  legends. 
Chaucer  gives  us  lively  pictures  of  real  life,  and 
though  he  did  not  make  the  English  language,  it 
may  truly  be  said  that  he  found  it  a  dialect  and 
left  it  a  language — and  this  language  was  formed 
on  the  dialect  of  the  East  Midlands  which  had  less 
marked  features  than  the  dialects  of  the  East, 
North,  South  or  West  and  was  therefore  the  easiest 
to  take  and  form  a  language  upon,  and  becomes 
thenceforth  the  literary  language  of  England. 

"Sib"  means  kin.  And  here  let  me  quote 
from  Lowell  on  the  style  of  Chaucer's  contempor- 
ary Gower. 

"  In  order  to  feel  fully  how  much  he  achieved,  let 
any  one  subject  himself  to  a  penitential  course  of 
reading  in  his  contemporary,  Gower,  who  worked 
in  a  material  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  same, 
or  listen  for  a  moment  to  the  barbarous  jangle 
which  Lydgate  and  Occleve  contrive  to  draw  from 
the  instrument  their  master  had  tuned  so  deftly. 
Gower  has  positively  raised  tediousness  to  the 
precision  of  science,  he  has  made  dulness  an  heir- 
loom for  the  students  of  our  literary  history. 
As  you  slip  to  and  fro  on  the  frozen  levels  of  his 
verse,  which  give  no  foothold  to  the  mind,  as  your 


14  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

nervous  ear  awaits  the  inevitable  recurrence  of 
his  rhyme,  regularly  pertinacious  as  the  tick  of  an 
eight-day  clock,  and  reminding  you  of  Words- 
worth's— 

Once  more  the  ass  did  lengthen  out 
The  hard,  dry,  seesaw  of  his  horrible  bray, 

you  learn  to  dread,  almost  to  respect,  the  powers 
of  this  indefatigable  man.  He  is  the  undertaker 
of  the  fair  mediaeval  legend,  and  his  style  has  the 
hateful  gloss,  the  seemly  unnatural  length  of  a 
coffin.  Love,  beauty,  passion,  nature,  art,  life, 
the  natural  and  theological  virtues,  there  is  nothing 
beyond  his  power  to  disenchant,  nothing — out 
of  which  the  tremendous  hydraulic  press  of  his 
allegory  (or  whatever  it  is,  for  I  am  not  sure  if  it  be 
not  something  even  worse)  will  not  squeeze  all 
feeling  and  freshness  and  leave  it  a  juiceless  pulp. 
It  matters  not  where  you  try  him,  whether  his 
story  be  Christian  or  pagan,  borrowed  from  his- 
tory or  fable,  you  cannot  escape  him.  Dip  in  at  the 
middle  or  the  end,  dodge  back  to  the  beginning, 
the  patient  old  man  is  there  to  take  you  by  the 
button  and  go  on  with  his  imperturbable  narrative. 
You  may  have  left  off  with  Clytemnestra,  and  you 
may  begin  again  with  Samson  ;  it  makes  no  odds, 
for  you  cannot  tell  one  from  t'other.  His  tedious- 
ness  is  omnipresent,  and  like  Dogberry  he  could 
find  in  his  heart  to  bestow  it  all  (and  more  if  he  had 
it)  on  your  worship.  The  word  lengthy  has  been 
charged  to  our  American  account,  but  it  must 
have  been  invented  by  the  first  reader  of  Gower's 
works,  the  only  inspiration  of  which  they  were 
ever  capable.  Our  literature  had  to  lie  by  and 
recruit  for  more  than  four  centuries  ere  it  could 


Chaucer  15 

give  us  an  equal  vacuity  in  Tupper,  so  persistent 
a  uniformity  of  commonplace  in  the  Recreations 
of  a  Country  Parson.  Let  us  be  thankful  that  the 
industrious  Gower  never  found  time  for  recreation !" 
(My  Study  Windows,  J.  R.  Lowell,  page  234.) 

But  Chaucer  besides  being  a  poet  and  the  foremost 
maker  of  our  English  language  is  one  of  the  best 
of  story-tellers — he  avoids  monotony  by  a  skilful 
arrangement  of  pauses.  He  does  not  give  undue 
prominence  to  minor  details — he  says  in  the  Man- 
of-Law's  Tale — 

Me  lists  not  of  the  chaff  nor  of  the  straw 
To  make  so  long  a  tale  as  of  the  corn, 

and  again  in  the  end  of  The  Nun  Priest's  Tale — 
Takith  the  fruyt  and  let  the  chaff  be  stille, 

and  he  was  not  in  the  habit  of  making  lines  of 
pure  stuffing  in  order  to  bring  in  the  rhyme  as 
Gower  constantly  does,  e.g. — 

This  maiden  Canacee  was  hight, 
Both  in  the  day  and  eke  by  night. 

He  is  always  cheerful  and  abounds  in  common 
sense  and  in  sympathy — witness  in  the  Clerk's 
Tale  his  expostulation  with  the  Marquis  for  his 
cruel  trials  of  his  wife  in  Boccaccio's  story  of  The 
Patient  Griselda ;  and  his  English  was  so  good 
that,  passing  over  the  claims  of  Layamon,  many 
say  fearlessly  that  Chaucer  first  wrote  English, 
and  we  know  that  200  years  later  Spenser  studied 
his  method  and  his  language  and  called  him  "  Mas- 
ter.'* With  regard  to  his  English  what  can  be  better 
than  this  ? 


16  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Thou  Polymnia 

On  Pernaso,  that,  with  thy  sisters  glad(e), 
By  Helicon,  not  far  from  Cirrea, 
Singest  with  voice  memorial  in  the  shade, 
Under  the  laurel  which  that  may  not  fade. 

Surely  that  might  have  been  Milton,  and  again—- 
Hide, Absolom,  thy  gilte  tresses  clear, 
Esther  lay  thou  thy  meekness  all  adown, 
Make  of  your  wifehood  no  comparison  ; 
Hide  ye  your  beauties  Ysoude  and  Elaine, 
My  lady  cometh,  that  all  this  may  distain — 

Legend  of  Good  Women,  203. 

quite  Spencerian — and  here  is  another  bit  with  the 
Elizabethan  ring  about  it — 

The  busy  lark,  the  messenger  of  day, 
Saluteth  in  his  song  the  morning  grey 
And  fiery  Phoebus  riseth  up  so  bright 
That  all  the  orient  laugheth  at  the  sight, 
And  with  his  streames  drieth  in  the  greves 
The  silver  droppes  hanging  on  the  leaves. 

Knight's  Tale,  633. 

A  simple  diction  and  an  ear  for  melody  are  Chaucer's 
guiding  stars,  and  if  at  times  he  is  betrayed  into 
fine  writing  he  can  turn  round  and  laugh  at  himself 
as  in  the  lines 

Till  that  the  brighte  sunne  had  lost  his  hue 
For  the  orizont  had  reft  the  sunne  his  light 
(This  is  as  much  to  sayen  as  "it  was  night  "). 

Let  us  now  note  two  or  three  of  the  main  char- 
acteristics of  Chaucer's  writing.  And  first  of  all 
we  may  note  that  Chaucer  loved  outward  nature, 
not  simply  to  make  "  copy  "  of  it,  but  as  a  source 
of  conscious  pleasurable  emotion.  When  the 
Troubadour  hailed  the  return  of  Spring  it  was  with 


Chaucer  17 

him  just  a  piece  of  empty  ritualism  ;  but  Chaucer 
took  a  true  delight  in  the  green  leaves  and  the 
singing  of  the  birds.  Then  he  is  himself  natural, 
he  does  his  best  things  as  it  were  inadvertently. 
This  gift,  if  not  genius,  is  what  makes  genius  love- 
able,  and  it  is  a  gift ;  "  if  a  man  have  it  not,  he 
will  never  find  it,  for  when  it  is  sought  it  is  gone  " — 
It  reminds  one  of  St.  Augustine's  answer  to  the 
question  "  What  is  time  ?  "  "I  know  when  you 
don't  ask  me." 

Next  we  may  observe  how  well  chosen  and  simple 
are  his  epithets.  Of  a  woman  he  tells  us  that  she 
was  "fresh,"  that  she  has  "glad  "  eyes.  Then,  he 
has  a  pithy  way  of  saying  things,  and  in  a  single 
line  gives  a  humorous  turn  to  a  story.  Some- 
times he  describes  by  a  mere  hint ;  thus,  when  the 
Friar  before  sitting  himself  softly  down,  drives 
away  the  cat,  we  know  without  need  of  more 
words  that  he  has  chosen  the  snuggest  corner. 

Next  we  must  note  that  Chaucer  is  pre-eminently 
human,  with  a  broad  genial  humanity.  Hence 
his  chief  skill  was  in  the  delineations  of  his  char- 
acters ;  these  are  imperishable  because  he  paints 
the  type  rather  than  the  individual,  and  W.  Blake 
truly  said  of  him  :  "  Names  alter,  things  never 
alter  :  as  Newton  numbered  the  Stars,  and  as 
Linnaeus  numbered  the  plants,  so  Chaucer  num- 
bered the  classes  of  men."  You  see  this  class  or 
type-painting  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Canterbury 
Tales  in  such  descriptive  lines  as  that  of  the  Doctor 
of  Medicine  whose  "  Study  was  but  little  on  the 
bible,"  of  the  Sergeant  at  Law  "  who  always  seemed 
busier  than  he  was  "  and  of  the  Merchant  who 
keeps  so  steady  a  countenance  that  "  there  wist  no 

c 


i8  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

wight  that  he  was  e'er  in  debt."  His  fun  comes 
out  when  he  speaks  of  the  doctor  and  the  apothe- 
cary playing  into  one  another's  hands — 

For  eche  of  them  made  other  for  to  winne 
Their  friendship  was  not  newe  to  beginne. 

His  satire  is  always  kindly  :  he  sets  the  world 
before  us  as  he  found  it  and  where  he  blames  he 
does  it  with  good  humour.  "  He  was,"  as  Lowell 
notices,  "  a  reformer,  too,  not  only  in  literature  but 
in  morals.  But  as  in  the  former  his  exquisite  tact 
saved  him  from  all  eccentricity,  so  in  the  latter  the 
pervading  sweetness  of  his  nature  could  never  be 
betrayed  into  harshness  and  invective.  He  seems 
incapable  of  indignation.  He  mused  good- 
naturedly  over  the  vices  and  follies  of  men,  and, 
never  forgetting  that  he  was  fashioned  of  the  same 
clay,  is  rather  apt  to  pity  than  condemn.  There  is 
no  touch  of  cynicism  in  all  he  wrote.  Dante's 
brush  seems  sometimes  to  have  been  smeared  with 
the  burning  pitch  of  his  own  fiery  lake.  Chaucer's 
pencil  is  dipped  in  the  cheerful  colour-box  of  the 
old  illuminators,  and  he  has  their  patient  delicacy  of 
touch,  with  a  freedom  far  beyond  their  somewhat 
mechanic  brilliancy."  Finally  he  turned  from 
allegory  to  the  actual  world  and  it  is  by  his  in- 
sisting on  a  definite  purpose  in  art,  by  his  vivacity, 
cheerfulness  and  simplicity  that  he  shows  himself 
the  true  founder  of  what  is  characteristically 
English  Literature,  the  father  of  English  poetry, 
"  The  Morning  Star  of  Song." 

The  journey  from  London  to  Canterbury  was 
fifty-six  miles,  but  such  were  the  roads  in  the 
fourteenth  century  that  it  took  four  days.  The 


Chaucer  19 

company  numbered  twenty-seven  apparently, 
and  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Host  who  promised 
a  supper  to  the  teller  of  the  best  tale,  they  told 
these  stories  to  beguile  the  time.  The  first  tale 
was  the  Knight's  about  the  love  of  Palamon  and 
Arcite  for  Emily  the  beautiful  sister  of  Duke 
Theseus  of  Athens.  The  Miller,  the  Reeve  and  the 
Cook  follow  with  tales  suited  to  the  coarseness  of 
their  natures,  for  which  Chaucer,  in  later  life, 
makes  an  apology.  The  Cook's  is  unfinished,  and 
ends  after  fifty-eight  lines  with  the  words — 

Of  this  Cokes  tale  maked  Chaucer  na  more. 

Passing  through  Deptford  and  Greenwich  they 
arrived  late  in  the  afternoon  at  Dartford,  and  put 
up  for  the  night. 

Next  day  began  with  the  Man  of  Law's  Tale, 
which  is  the  tale  of  Constance,  the  Shipman's 
Tale  (a  coarse  one)  followed,  and  then  the  Prioress 
tells  her  pretty  tale  of  the  little  murdered  chorister. 
Chaucer  himself  follows  with  the  dull  tales  of  Sir 
Thopas  in  verse  and  Melibeas  in  prose.  The  Monk 
comes  next  and  instead  of  a  good  hunting  story 
which  the  Host  called  for  he  reels  off  a  string  of 
tragedies  till  he  is  stopped  as  being  too  depressing 
and  the  Prioresses,  attendant  Priest,  or  the  Nun 
Preeste,  tells  his  tale  of  the  vanity  by  which  a 
gallant  Cock  fell  a  victim  to  Reynard  the  Fox, 
but  eventually  escaped,  and  this  brought  the  Pil- 
grims to  Rochester  which  was  their  second  halting 
place. 

These  two  journeys  had  been  of  fifteen  miles 
each.  Next  day  they  did  sixteen,  and  had  only  ten 
to  do  on  the  last  day. 


2O  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Many  of  the  Tales  are  unfinished,  or  left  without 
the  final  touches,  or,  having  been  in  earlier  years 
written  for  one  character  are  in  the  Tales  put  into 
the  mouth  of  another.  Hence  The  Nun  speaks  of 
herself  as  "  a  Son  of  Eve  "  and  the  Shipman's 
Tale  seems  to  have  been  meant  for  the  Wife  of 
Bath's  second  Tale. 

The  Clerk's  Tale  was  written  earlier  and  had 
some  stanzas  added  and  the  Knight's  Tale  is 
entirely  re-written  from  two  previous  stories.  It 
is  in  rhyming  Heroic  couplets,  and  it  is  probable 
that  all  the  Tales  written  in  couplets  were  composed 
after  1386  when  he  began  to  devote  himself  entirely 
to  The  Tales  and  those  in  stanzas  before. 

The  Nun  Priest's  Tale  is  also  written  in  these 
Heroic  couplets. 

Chaucer,  like  Spenser,  did  not  carry  out  his 
whole  intention  or  we  should  have  had  120  Can- 
terbury Tales  instead  of  twenty-four,  and  he 
reproached  himself  towards  the  end  of  his  life  for 
the  grossness  of  some  of  the  Tales,  notably  those 
taken  straight  from  Boccaccio  and  in  his  time  and 
country  considered  not  unfit  for  ears  polite.  This 
reproach  Spenser  never  had  any  need  to  make  to 
himself,  for  though  he  too  has  his  lines  which  we 
might  wish  suppressed,  this  is  simply  due  to  the 
fact  that,  though  himself  the  soul  of  purity,  he 
lived  and  wrote  in  the  unblushing  days  of  Good 
Queen  Bess. 

With  respect  to  metres  Chaucer  introduced 
several  from  Italy,  viz.  the  eight-line  stanza  with 
three  rhymes  arranged  in  the  order  ab-ab-bc-bc,  the 
seven-line  stanza  ab-ab-bcc  (e.g.  The  Man  of 
Lawe's  and  The  Clerke's  Tale)  and  the  rhyming 


Chaucer  21 

Heroic  couplet  of  ten  syllables  as  in  The  Legend 
of  Good  Women.  Both  Dryden  and  Pope  made 
great  use  of  this  last  metre  which  is  still  common  in 
English  poetry. 


SPENSER 

1552-1599 

EDMUND  SPENSER  was  born  in  London  l  in  1552, 
twelve  years  before  Shakespeare  and  about  a  year 
before  the  hideous  Marian  fires  began  to  blaze  in 
his  native  parish  of  Smithfield.  Edward  VI  died 
in  1553,  Mary  in  1558.  Besides  Shakespeare,  his 
contemporaries  in  England  were  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
Camden,  Hooker,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Drake,  Bacon, 
Ben  Jonson,  Robert  Devereux  Earl  of  Essex, 
Robert  Dudley  Earl  of  Leicester  and  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, to  all  of  whom  he  was  well  known  ;  outside 
of  England  Tasso  published  his  Gierusalemme 
Liberata  in  1582.  He  went  from  Merchant  Tay- 
lors School  to  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  in 
1569.  Leaving  Cambridge  he  went  for  a  year  at 
least  to  the  North  of  England,  where  he  wrote 
The  Shepheardes'  Calendar  in  which  under  the 
name  of  Colin  Clout  he  complains  to  Hobbinol,  i.e. 
his  Cambridge  friend,  Gabriel  Harvey,  of  his  ill 
success  in  his  wooing  of  Rosalind,  "  The  Widdowe's 
daughter  of  the  Glenne."  The  work  is  in  twelve 
eclogues,  one  for  each  month  of  the  year.  It  is 
dedicated  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  was  published 
by  Spenser's  Cambridge  friend,  Edward  Kirke, 
in  1579-80.  This  was  at  the  beginning  of  the 

1  See  Prothalamion,  lines  128-132. 
22 


Spenser  23 

most  splendid  period  of  our  literature,  "  The 
Elizabethan  period/'  and  Spenser  being  now  in 
London  was,  through  Sidney's  introductions,  able 
to  mix  with  the  most  brilliant  intellectual  society  of 
the  day.  Under  the  name  of  Tityrus,  Spenser 
refers  more  than  once  in  The  Shepheardes*  Calendar 
to  Chaucer  as  his  Great  Master,  for  instance  in 
"  June  "  he  says — 

The  God  of  Shepheards,  Tityrus,  is  dead, 
Who  taught  me  homely,  as  I  can,  to  make  : 
He,  whilst  he  lived,  was  the  soveraigne  head 
Of  Shepheards  all  that  bene  with  love  ytake  : 
Well  couth  he  wayle  his  woes,  and  lightly  slake 
The  flames  which  love  within  his  heart  had  bredd, 
And  tell  us  mery  tales  to  keepe  us  wake 
The  while  our  sheepe  about  us  safely  fedde. 

And  again  in  "  December  "• 

The  gentle  Shepheard  satte  beside  a  springe, 
All  in  the  shadow  of  a  bushye  brere, 
That  Colin  hight,  who  well  could  pype  and  singe, 
For  he  of  Tityrus  his  songs  did  lere  : 

Chaucer  had  lived  200  years  before,  but  no  great 
poem  had  been  brought  out  in  England  during 
those  two  centuries  which  can  compare  with 
Spenser's  Faerie  Queene.  The  revival  of  learning 
had  more  to  do  with  the  appearance  of  the  poem 
than  The  Canterbury  Tales  had,  and  to  this  revival 
with  its  classical  influence  the  rise  of  our  Pastoral 
poetry  in  imitation  of  Theocritus  and  Virgil  is 
certainly  due. 

"  The  S hep  hear 'des  Calendar  conteyning  twelve 
^Eglogues  proportionable  to  the  12  monethes, 
entitled  to  the  noble  and  vertuous  Gentleman  most 
worthy  of  all  titles  both  of  learning  and  chevalrie 


24  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Maister  Philip  Sidney  "  was  brought  out  as  stated 
by  the  poet's  college  friend,  Edward  Kirke,  who 
explains  the  term  ^Eglogue  as  "  goatherds'  "  tales. 

And  such  they  were  with  Theocritus  the  creator  of 
Greek  Pastoral  poetry,  but  with  Virgil  they  became 
Shepherds'  tales  and  are  called  Eclogues. 

The  poem  is  partly  autobiographical,  telling  of 
his  unsuccessful  love  for  "  Rosalind/'  But  the 
fourth  month's  aeglogue  is  all  in  praise  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Six  years  later  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
death  at  Arnheim  at  the  age  of  32,  from  wounds  at 
the  battle  of  Zutphen,  1586,  was  commemorated  by 
Spenser  in  the  poem  Astrophel  and  in  the  Pas  tor  all 
Mglogue  in  which  Lycon  and  Colin  are  Spenser  and 
Sidney,  and  again  in  1590  he  writes  some  beautiful 
verses  about  him  in  his  poem  The  Ruines  of  Time. 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  buried  at  St.  Paul's. 

In  Astrophel,  which  he  dedicated  to  The  Countess 
of  Essex,  Clorinda  is  Lady  Pembroke,  Sidney's 
sister,  and  "  The  doleful  lay  of  Clorinda  "  is  put 
into  her  mouth.  In  this  year,  1590,  it  was  that 
the  first  three  books  of  the  Faerie  Queene  were 
published  and  so  well  received  that  the  publisher 
got  together  all  that  he  could  of  Spenser's  writings 
and  brought  out  a  book  of  Complaints  on  the 
vanity  of  worldly  things  as  compared  with  spiritual. 
This  volume  contained  The  Ruines  of  Time,  which 
was  to  some  extent  autobiographical,  The  Teares 
of  the  Muses,  dedicated  to  Lady  Strange  for  whom 
Milton  wrote  his  Arcades,  Virgil's  Gnat,  Mother 
Hubbard's  Tale  or  Prosopopoia,  Miiiopotmos,  etc. 
Probably  in  the  same  year  (1590)  and  before  he 
returned  to  Ireland,  Spenser  brought  out  Daph- 
naidat  an  elegie  on  the  death  of  Henry  Lord 


Spenser  25 

Howard's  daughter,  the  wife  of  Arthur  George,  Esq., 
and  then  when  he  got  back  to  Ireland  he  wrote 
Colin  Clout's  come  home  again,  which  he  sent  with  a 
letter  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  December  27,  1591. 
In  his  letter  he  says  :  "I  make  you  a  present  of 
this  simple  pastorall  that  you  may  see  that  I  am 
not  alwaies  ydle  as  yee  think  though  not  greatly 
well  occupied,  .  .  .  The  which  I  humbly  be- 
seech you  to  accept  in  part  of  paiment  of  the 
infinite  debt  in  which  I  acknowledge  myself 
bounden  unto  you,  for  your  singular  favour  and 
sundrie  good  turnes,  showed  to  me  at  my  late  being 
in  England/'  The  conclusion  of  the  poem  tells  of 
his  still  enduring  affection  for  Rosalind  who  had 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  him  some  eleven  or  twelve 
years  before.  At  line  540  he  speaks  of  the  three 
Ladies  Spencer. 

In  life  praiseworthy  are  the  sisters  three, 

The  honor  of  the  Noble  familee  : 

Of  which  I  meanest  boast  myself  to  be  ; 

for  though  he  spelt  his  name  with  an  s  he  was 
proud  to  belong  to  the  Spencer  family. 

In  the  sixth  book  of  the  Faerie  Queene,  Canto 
X,  he  describes  his  love  as  a  fourth  maid  present 
with  the  three  Graces  to  whom  alone  he  pipes  (see 
st.  14-16  and  25  and  27). 

The  last  of  his  poems  were  written  in  England 
in  1596.  These  were  the  Hymns  to  Love  and 
Beautie,  dedicated  to  the  Countesses  of  Northum- 
berland and  Warwick,  and  the  Prothalamion  "a 
spousall  verse  "  in  honour  of  the  double  marriage 
of  the  two  Ladies  Somerset  daughters  of  the 
Earle  of  Worcester.  All  his  contemporaries  agree 
in  thinking  that  he  had  fully  intended  to  write 


26  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

six  more  books  of  the  Faerie  Queene,  e.g.  Browne 
in  his  Britannia's  Pastorals,  ii.  i,  says — 

But  ere  he  ended  his  melodious  song, 
An  host  of  angels  flew  the  clouds  among, 
And  rapt  the  swan  from  his  attentive  mates 
To  make  him  one  of  their  associates — 
In  heaven's  faire  choir. 

We  have  made  mention  of  several  of  Spenser's 
minor  poems,  and  when  we  study  them  and  see 
their  great  beauty  it  is  more  and  more  difficult 
to  understand  how  it  is  that  they  are  so  little  read 
and  known.  Pastoral  poetry  has  always  a  unique 
charm  and  The  Shepheardes'  Calendar  is  full  of 
beautiful  passages.  Muiopotmos  is  very  fine. 
The  description  of  Arachne's  tapestry  in  which  she 
figured  Europa  on  the  Bull  is  unsurpassable. 

She  seem'd  still  backe  unto  the  land  to  looke 
And  her  playfellowes  aid  to  call,  and  feare 
The  dashing  of  the  waves,  that  up  she  tooke 
Her  daintie  feete,  and  garments  gathered  neare  : 

But  the  loveliest  lines  of  all  are  to  be  found  in  the 
Epithalamion,  his  own  triumphant  Wedding  Ode. 
It  is  written  in  stanzas  of  some  eighteen  lines  or 
so  with  a  refrain,  thus — 

Open  the  temple  gates  unto  my  love, 

Open  them  wide  that  she  may  enter  in, 

And  all  the  postes  adorne  as  doth  behove, 

And  all  the  pillars  deck  with  garlands  trim, 

For  to  receive  this  saint  with  honour  dew, 

That  commeth  in  to  yea. 

With  trembling  steps,  and  humble  reverence 

She  commeth  in  before  the  Almightie's  view  ; 

Of  her  ye  Virgins  learn  obedience, 

When  so  ye  come  unto  those  holy  places, 

To  humble  your  proud  faces  : 

Bring  her  up  to  th'  High  Altar,  that  she  may 

The  sacred  Ceremonies  there  partake, 

The  which  do  endlesse  Matrimony  make ; 


Spenser  27 

And  let  the  roring  Organs  loudly  play 

The  praises  of  the  Lord  in  lively  notes  ; 

The  whiles  with  hollow  throates, 

The  Choristers  the  joyous  Antheme  sing, 

That  all  the  woods  may  answere,  and  their  echo  ring. 

This  stately  Alexandrine  at  the  end  of  each  stanza 
is  used  with  effect  in  the  Faerie  Queene,  in  which  the 
stanzas  are  but  of  half  the  length,  being  made  up 
of  eight  lines  of  rhyming  Heroics  and  an  Alexan- 
drine or  line  of  twelve  feet  at  the  end.  There  are 
but  three  rhymes  in  the  stanza,  thus  distributed  : 
lines  i  and  3  rhyme,  lines  2,  4,  5  and  7,  and 
lines  6,  8,  and  9.  This  arrangement  the  poet  has 
made  so  entirely  his  own  that  it  is  now  generally 
known  as  the  Spenserian  stanza. 

The  publication  of  Spenser's  pastoral  The  Shep- 
heardes'  Calendar  put  him  at  once  into  the  front 
rank  of  poets.  Michael  Drayton  speaks  of  it 
thus  :  "  Maister  Edmund  Spenser  has  done  enough 
for  the  immortality,  had  he  only  given  us  his 
Shepheardes  Calendar,  a  masterpiece  if  any." 
He  wrote  several  bits  before  1580  which  were  after- 
wards incorporated  in  the  Faerie  Queene.  The 
metre  he  chose  for  that  did  not  meet  the  approval 
of  Gabriel  Harvey,  who  was  of  the  Classical  School, 
and  he  tried  to  get  Spenser  to  write  in  hexametres. 
In  1580,  by  Lord  Leicester's  influence,  he  was 
appointed  Secretary  to  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton  who 
was  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland.  He  was  also 
made  Clerk  of  Degrees  (with  a  good  salary)  in  the 
Irish  Court  of  Chancery  and  had  a  lease  of  the 
lands  and  Abbey  Manor  of  Enniscorthy.  This  he 
sold  in  1581  to  Richard  Synot,  who  again  sold  it  to 
Sir  H.  Wallop  and  it  has  been  in  the  Wallop 
family  ever  since.  In  1582  he  returned  to  London 


28  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

with  Lord  Grey  who  had  resigned.  But  he  re- 
tained his  Clerkship,  and  soon  returned  to  Dublin, 
Again  in  1590  he  came  to  England  with  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  to  publish  the  first  three  books  of  his 
Faerie  Queene,  but  the  rest  of  his  life  with  these 
two  breaks  was  nearly  all  spent  in  Ireland.  There, 
in  1587  he  wrote  Colin  Clout,  writing,  as  he  says 
more  than  once,  "  on  salvage  soyle,"  but  these  were 
not  published  till  1595.  In  1588  he  obtained  by 
purchase  the  Clerkship  of  the  Council  of  Munster, 
and  as  his  friends  had  obtained  for  him  from  Queen 
Elizabeth  a  grant  of  a  large  estate,  over  5,000 
acres,  at  a  nominal  rent  of  £17  75.  6d.  at  Kilcolman , 
co.  Cork,  part  of  the  territories  forfeited  by  the 
Earl  of  Desmond  in  1586,  he  was  very  well  off. 
In  1589  Sir  W.  Raleigh  visited  him  and  read  the 
first  three  books  of  the  Faerie  Queene,  of  which 
Spenser  writes — 

And  when  he  heard  the  music  that  I  made 
He  found  himself  full  greatly  pleased  at  it. 

It  was  Raleigh  who  induced  him  to  revisit 
England  in  1590,  and  presented  him  at  Court  to 
Queen  Elizabeth.  He  read  her  some  of  the  poem, 
probably  the  parts  about  Gloriana  and  Belphcebe, 
which  characters  were  meant  to  represent 
Elizabeth,  and  which  he  tells  us, 

"  by  the  measure  of  her  own  great  mind  "  she  declared  to 
be  "of  wondrous  worth." 

The  three  books  were  printed  and  Elizabeth  gave 
Spenser  a  pension  of  £50,  equivalent  to  £250  in 
these  days. 

He  was  now  provided  with  both  a  house  and  an 
income,  and  in  1592  or  1593  he  fell  in  with  an 


Spenser  29 

'  Elizabeth' ;  he  tells  us  in  Sonnet  74  that  her 
name  was  the  same  as  that  of  his  mother  and  his 
Queen.  She  was  probably  a  Boyle  and  lived  at 
Kilcoran  near  Youghal  in  the  South  of  Ireland. 
He  speaks  of  "  The  sea  that  neighbours  to  her 
near."  For  two  years  he  wooed  her  and  the 
varying  ups  and  downs  in  the  course  of  his 
wooing  are  set  forth  in  eighty-eight  Sonnets 
or  "  Amoretti."  In  Sonnet  67  he  speaks  of 
her  relenting.  It  begins  "  like  as  a  huntsman/1 
and  at  length  on  June  n,  1594,  on  St.  Barnabas 
Day  (  =  N.S.  June  21,  see  Epithalamion,  267, 
etc.)  he  married  her,  and  his  lovely  Epithala- 
mion  is  a  song  of  delight  and  triumph  at  his  final 
success.  She  was  undoubtedly  beautiful.  Whilst 
writing  the  Sonnets  and  Epithalamion  he  was  also 
engaged  on  the  last  three  books  of  his  Faerie 
Queene,  and  in  Book  X  he  thus  refers  to  his  love  : 
"  and  yet  shecertes  wasacountraylasse."  This  may 
mean  a  country  and  not  a  town-bred  girl.  In  1596 
he  brought  his  wife  and  the  three  next  books  of  the 
Faerie  Queene  and  the  MS.  of  his  prose  work  on  the 
state  of  Ireland  to  London,  where  the  six  books  of 
the  Faerie  Queene  were  printed  together.  In  1597 
he  returned  to  Kilcolman  and  next  year  Elizabeth 
recommended  him  as  Sheriff  of  Cork ;  but  the 
Munster  Rebellion  broke  out  in  that  year  and  he, 
as  a  follower  of  the  severe  methods  of  repression 
of  Lord  Grey,  was  specially  obnoxious.  He  had 
to  flee  in  great  haste  ;  and  in  the  confusion  the 
youngest  of  his  three  little  ones  was  left  in  the 
Castle  of  Kilcolman,  which  the  rebels  sacked  and 
burnt ;  all  his  papers  and  possessions  perished  in  the 
flames  and  his  child  was  never  heard  of  again. 


30  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

vSpenser  reached  England  broken  hearted  and  three 
months  later  died  at  Westminster  on  January  16, 
1599,  at  the  age  of  46.  Jonson  says  "  for  lacke 
of  bread/'  which  is  hardly  credible.  He  was 
buried  in  the  Abbey  by  the  Earl  of  Essex,  in  the 
South  Transept  or  "Poets'  Corner"  and  next  to 
Chaucer ;  poets,  we  are  told,  bearing  his  pall 
and  throwing  funeral  odes  into  his  grave  together 
with  the  pens  they  were  written  with.  His  two 
sons,  Silvanus  and  Peregrine,  grew  up  and  his 
widow  married  a  Mr.  Seckerstone.  The  Queen 
ordered  a  monument  to  be  erected  over  him,  but 
the  money  was  misappropriated  by  her  agent,  and 
the  present  monument  was  set  up  in  1620  by  Anne, 
Countess  of  Dorset. 


THE    "FAERIE    QUEENE." 

In  Spenser's  time  printing  was  not  so  far  advanced 
but  that  MSS.  were  often  multiplied  and  a  work  thus 
went  round  amongst  the  author's  friends  for  some 
years  before  it  was  set  up  in  type.  His  prose  dia- 
logue between  Eudoxus  and  Irenoeus,  called  A 
View  of  the  present  state  of  Ireland,  had  quite  a 
considerable  circulation  for  nearly  fifty  years  before 
its  publication  in  1633,  and  the  three  first  Books 
of  the  Faerie  Queene,  begun  in  England  not  later 
than  1579,  were  also  circulated  in  MS.  We  can  fix 
this  date  thus.  Spenser's  Cambridge  friend  and 
senior,  Gabriel  Harvey,  when  asked  to  return  it  with 
a  promised  criticism,  writes  to  Spenser  in  Ireland 
in  April  1580,  "  I  had  once  again  nigh  forgotten 
your  Faerie  Queen  ;  howbeit,  by  good  chaunce 
I  have  nowe  sent  hir  home  at  the  laste  neither 


Spenser  31 

in  better  nor  worse  case  than  I  founde  hir."  He 
goes  on  to  say  that  he  thinks  much  more  highly  of 
his  Teares  of  the  Muses  than  of  his  "  Elvish  Queene." 
Again  in  1582  at  a  Literary  Society  meeting  in 
Dublin,  Spenser,  when  asked  to  write  a  treatise  on 
Moral  Philosophy,  excused  himself  in  the  following 
words  :  "  For  sure  I  am,  that  it  is  not  unknowne 
unto  you,  that  I  have  already  undertaken  a  work 
tending  to  the  same  effect,  which  is  in  heroical 
verse,  under  the  title  of  a  Faerie  Queene  to  re- 
present the  Moral  Vertues,  assigning  to  every 
vertue  a  Knight  to  be  the  patron  and  defender  of 
the  same,  in  whose  actions  and  feates  of  arms  and 
chivalry,  the  operations  of  that  vertue,  whereof 
he  is  the  protector,  are  to  be  expressed,  and  the 
vices  and  unruly  appetites  that  oppose  themselves 
against  the  same,  to  be  beaten  down  and  overcome, 
which  work  as  I  have  already  well  entered  into,  if 
God  shall  please  to  spare  me  life  that  I  may  finish 
it  according  to  my  mind,  your  wish  will  be  in  some 
sort  accomplished,  though  perhaps  not  so  effectually 
as  you  could  desire."  So,  clearly,  by  1582  he  had 
made  some  way  with  his  work.  His  plan  was  for 
twelve  Books,  but  he  only  wrote  six,  for  though 
some  may  have  perished  in  the  flames  when  his 
castle  in  Ireland  was  burnt  it  was  probably  not 
much  ;  all  that  we  have  is  a  couple  of  cantos 
called  Mutabilitie,  which  may  have  been  meant  to 
form  a  part  of  some  following  Book.  The  letter 
to  Sir  W.  Raleigh  prefixed  to  the  first  three  Books 
published  in  1590  at  Sir  Walter's  instigation,  was 
omitted  when  in  1596  those  three  were  published 
again  with  the  next  three  added.  They  were 
brought  out  by  W,  Ponsonby,  a  stationer,  the 


32  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

printer  of  the  first  three  being  John  Wolf ;  but  it  is 
interesting  to  know  that  the  1596  edition  was 
printed  by  R.  Field  at  Stratford-on-Avon  who  had, 
in  1593  and  1594,  printed  Shakespeare's  Venus 
and  Adonis  and  Lucreece.  He  used  as  his  device 
an  anchor  twined  with  laurel :  and  we  see  in  Sonnet 
xxvin  that  Spenser's  badge  also  was  a  laurel. 
For  a  full  account  of  the  allegories  in  the  poem  and 
of  the  metre,  as  well  as  for  an  eloquent  apprecia- 
tion of  Spenser  as  a  poet,  see  Kitchen's  Introduction 
to  the  Spenser  Volume  in  the  English  Classics  Series 
published  by  the  Clarendon  Press  at  Oxford.  He 
quotes  from  Hallam's  Literature  of  Europe,  Part 
ii.,  Chap.  2,  where  he  says  that  "The  First  Book 
is  generally  admitted  to  be  the  finest  of  the  six ; 
.  .  .  that  the  Red  Cross  Knight  designates  the 
Militant  Christian,  whom  Una,  the  true  Church, 
loves,  whom  Duessa,  the  type  of  Popery,  seduces, 
who  is  reduced  almost  to  despair,  but  rescued  by 
the  intervention  of  Una  and  the  assistance  of  Faith, 
Hope  and  Charity,  is  what  no  one  feels  any  diffi- 
culty in  acknowledging,  but  what  every  one  may 
easily  read  the  poem  without  perceiving  or  remem- 
bering. In  an  allegory  conducted  with  such  pro- 
priety, and  concealed  or  revealed  with  so  much 
art,  there  can  surely  be  nothing  to  repel  our 
taste  :  and  those  who  read  the  First  Book  of  the 
Faery  Queene  without  pleasure,  must  seek  (what 
others  perhaps  will  be  at  no  loss  to  discover  for 
them)  a  different  cause  for  their  insensibility  than 
the  tediousness  or  insipidity  of  allegorical  poetry. 
Every  canto  of  this  book  teems  with  the  choicest 
beauties  of  imagination  ;  he  came  to  it  in  the 
freshness  of  his  genius,  which  shines  throughout." 


Spenser  33 

Allegory  nowadays  has  few  admirers  and  it  seems 
that  Spenser  himself  had  doubts  as  to  the  proper 
understanding  of  his  poem  even  by  literary  people, 
for  he  wrote  a  letter  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  dated 
23  Januarie  1589,  beginning,  "  Sir,  Knowing  how 
doubtfully  all  Allegories  may  be  construed,  and 
this  booke  of  mine,  which  I  have  entituled  The 
Faery  Queene,  being  a  continued  Allegoric,  or  darke 
conceit,  I  have  thought  good,  as  well  for  avoyding 
of  jealous  opinions  and  misconstructions,  as  also 
for  your  better  light  in  reading  thereof,  (being  so 
by  you  commanded)  to  discover  unto  you  the 
general  intention  and  meaning,  which  in  the  whole 
course  thereof  I  have  fashioned." 


JOHN  MILTON 
1608-1674 

DECEMBER  9,  1908,  was  the  tercentenary  of  the 
birth  of  John  Milton. 

It  was  celebrated  in  March  by  the  Columbia 
University  of  America  when  the  only  existing  MS. 
of  the  first  book  of  Paradise  Lost  was  shown,  and 
at  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  in  the  summer,  and 
in  December  in  London  amongst  other  things  by 
a  special  meeting  of  the  British  Academy  convened 
to  do  honour  to  the  genius  of  Milton,  and  also  by  an 
exhibition  of  MSS.  portraits  and  early  editions, 
at  the  British  Museum.  Here  was  shown  the 
register  of  the  church  of  All  Hallows',  Broad 
Street,  with  the  following  baptismal  entry  : — 

"  The  xxth  day  of  December,  1608,  was  also 
baptized  John  the  soune  of  John  Mylton,  Scri- 
venor." 

This  precious  volume  was  lent  by  the  Rev.  A.  W. 
Hutton,  of  the  Rectory  of  St.  Mary-le-Bow.  The 
old  church  of  St.  Mary-le-Bow  in  Cheapside  con- 
tains the  Milton  tablet  which  was  formerly  to  be 
seen  in  the  neighbouring  church  of  All  Hallows,  in 
which  the  poet  was  baptized,  and  here  we  may 
notice  the  father's  name  is  spelt  in  the  register 
with  a  '  y/  but  we  need  not  put  too  much  stress 
on  that  as  the  word  son  in  the  same  line  is  spelt 

34 


John  Milton  35 

soune,  one  spelling  bearing  no  more  authority  than 
the  other. 

Milton's  family  Bible,  with  eight  autograph 
entries  by  the  poet,  was  also  shown,  and  Henry 
Law's  original  autograph  music  for  five  of  the  songs 
in  Comus,  and  various  other  interesting  documents 
down  to  the  autograph  MS.  of  Tennyson's  fine 
lines  published  in  the  Enoch  Arden  volume, 
beginning — 

O  mighty  mouthed  inventor  of  harmonies, 
O  skilled  to  sing  of  time  or  Eternity, 
God-gifted  organ-voice  of  England, 
Milton,  a  name  to  resound  for  ages. 

The  mass  meeting  at  the  Whitefield  Central 
Mission  Building  in  Tottenham  Court  Road  took 
the  form  of  a  Milton  Tercentenary  Celebration, 
and  there  the  Master  of  the  Rolls  presided  and  said 
that— 

"  Most  men  thought  of  Milton  simply  as  a  poet. 
They  recognized  him  as  a  master  of  harmonious 
verse,  as  the  writer  of  many  exquisite  sonnets  and 
lyrics,  and  as  the  author  of  the  epic,  Paradise 
Lost.  All  that  was  true  ;  but  there  was  another 
side  of  Milton  with  which  they  were  not  perhaps 
so  familiar.  Milton's  prose  writings  were  but  little 
read.  They  contained  a  great  deal  that  was  not 
altogether  consonant  with  the  taste  and  the  tem- 
per of  our  time  ;  but  they  included  patches  of  the 
most  splendid  diction  to  be  found  in  the  literature 
of  England,  and  they  embodied  ideas  that  had 
now  become  almost  parts  of  our  nature.  John 
Milton  was  above  all  a  devotee  of  liberty ;  he 
was  a  devotee  of  public  liberty,  a  devotee  of 


36  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

liberty  in  the  sense  of  freedom  of  thought,  of  free- 
dom of  expression,  of  freedom  of  the  Press,  and 
above  all  of  religious  freedom/' 

The  Master  of  the  Rolls  was  followed  by  the 
Lord  Advocate,  who,  laying  stress  on  Milton's 
strenuous  championship  of  Liberty,  said  that  he 
defended  religious  liberty  against  prelacy,  civil 
liberty  against  the  Crown,  liberty  of  the  Press 
against  the  Executive,  liberty  of  conscience  against 
Presbyterians,  and  domestic  liberty  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  canon  law. 

I  take  it  for  granted  that  we  all  know  that 
Milton's  life  as  an  author  is  divisible  into  three 
periods:  (i)  His  Lyric  period  ending  before  he 
was  30.  (2)  His  Prose  period  extending  over 
twenty  years.  (3)  His  Blank  Verse  period  in 
which,  when  blind,  he  wrote  the  two  great  poems 
he  had  been  preparing  for  all  his  life,  and  which 
were  followed  by  Samson  Agonistes,  full  of  pathetic 
autobiographical  touches,  but  not  up  to  the  majes- 
tic level  of  his  great  life-poems,  Paradise  Lost 
and  Paradise  Regained.  It  was  published  in  1670 
or  1671,  and  in  1674,  at  the  age  of  65,  he  died. 

And  now  to  return  to  the  Tercentenary  Celebra- 
tion. 

The  Master  of  Peterhouse,  addressing  the 
Members  of  the  British  Academy,  said  that  "there 
was  nothing  alien  to  the  spirit  either  of  Milton's 
life  or  of  Milton's  art  in  the  tribute  then  being  paid. 
To  his  soaring  genius  the  thought  of  an  undying 
fame  and  the  desire  of  it  were  habitual ;  but  the 
appeal  which  he  made  was  not  to  the  '  broad 
rumour '  of  a  thoughtless  world — neither  the  world 
to  which  he  was  unknown  in  the  pure  tranquillity 


John  Milton  37 

of  his  youth,  nor  that  which  hurried  past  the  blind 
solitude  of  his  declining  years.  Before  the  greatest 
of  his  works  was  completed  he  knew  to  what  height 
his  name  would  be  raised  unless  the  perversity  of 
fate  should  '  damp  his  intended  wing  '  ;  and, 
when  his  work  was  done,  his  imagination,  speeding 
into  futurity  with  steady  flight,  would  not  have 
disdained  that  clear  recognition  of  later  ages  which 
comes  slowly  to  the  greatest,  and  imperfectly 
even  to  them.  The  lecturer  then  asked  his  audi- 
ence to  think  of  Milton  at  two  stages  of  his  life  : 
first  in  1638,  when  after  his  seven  years  at  Cam- 
bridge and  five  in  studious  seclusion  at  his  father's 
house  at  Horton,  he  went,  on  the  eve  of  his 
Italian  journey,  to  call  upon  Sir  Henry  Wotton, 
the  aged  Provost  of  Eton.  Milton  was  then  in  the 
beauty  of  early  manhood,  with  '  fair  large  front, 
and  eye  sublime/  and  hyacinthine  locks  hanging 
in  clusters  '  round  from  his  parted  forelock  '  ;  the 
author,  already,  of  Arcades  and  Comus.  It  was 
not,  as  it  had  been  with  Goethe,  the  Italian  visit 
which  separated,  as  by  a  golden  bar,  the  earlier 
from  the  later  half  of  his  career,  for  the  influence 
of  classical  antiquity  was  already  strong  in  him. 
It  was  rather  the  anticipation  of  his  return  to 
England,  where  a  new  responsibility,  as  he  believed, 
awaited  him,  which  caused  him,  as  it  were,  to  re- 
cast the  framework  of  his  plan  of  life  and  work. 
The  second  stage  was  a  generation  later,  in  the 
still  years  which  preceded  his  peaceful  death,  when 
he  needed  no  stimulus,  and  asked  for  no  encourage- 
ment. In  the  interval  had  come  the  controversial 
pamphlets.  Voices  had  not  been  wanting  to  charge 
him  with  obliquity  of  judgment  in  turning  aside 


38  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

from  divine  poesy  to  barren  controversy.  Turn- 
ing aside  indeed  !  barren  controversy  !  He  knew 
its  barrenness,  its  frequent  futility,  and  the  weari- 
ness of  soul  which  is  the  common  meed  of  those 
who  '  embark  in  a  troubled  sea  of  noises  and  hoarse 
disputes/  '  But  were  it  the  meanest  under-service, 
if  God  by  His  secretary  Conscience  enjoin  it,  it 
were  sad  for  me  if  I  should  draw  back/  Yet, 
though  he  thus  resolved,  he  had  a  settled  plan  of 
campaign,  as  it  might  truly  be  called,  for  the  strug- 
gle into  which  he  had  undertaken  to  enter.  From 
the  Church  he  turned  to  respond  to  an  even  broader 
appeal — that  of  Liberty.  To  Liberty  he  came 
forward  to  testify  under  all  the  chief  aspects  of 
national  life  — marriage,  education,  and  freedom 
from  tyranny  of  Church  and  State  in  the  expression 
of  thought.  Freedom  was  here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
cause  for  which  Milton  strove,  and  the  love  of 
which  fired  his  zeal.  In  time  he  became  the  ser- 
vant of  the  Commonwealth,  and  in  his  Defence  on 
Behalf  of  the  English  People,  as  spokesman  of  both 
Government  and  nation,  he  defended  by  reason  the 
truth  which  had  been  defended  by  arms.  And 
the  price  he  paid  for  rendering  service  to  the  English 
people  was  the  loss  of  his  sight.  .  .  . 

"  Paradise  Lost  was  in  no  sense  the  fruit  of  Mil- 
ton's old  age.  When  it  was  finished  he  was  not  yet 
sixty.  The  idea  had  been  present  to  him  from  his 
youth  ;  all  the  general  conditions  of  the  work  he 
had  long  since  determined,  and  for  it  he  had  studied 
contemporary  works  on  the  same  theme.  The 
difficulty  experienced  by  many  worthy  people  in 
discriminating  between  what  Milton  found  in  the 
Bible  and  what  he  added  of  his  own  was  a  testimony 


John  Milton  39 

to  the  harmoniousness  of  the  design  on  which  the 
work  was  built.  Milton's  familiarity  with  the 
Bible  was  such  that  the  whole  range  of  ornament 
which  lies  in  the  beauty  of  biblical  phraseology  and 
the  organ-tones  of  mere  biblical  nomenclature  was 
at  his  command  as  it  never  had  been  at  that  of  any 
writer  before,  and  was  certainly  never  likely  to  be 
again.  But  what  was  much  more  was  that  the 
initiated  poet's  intimacy  with  his  theme,  recast  as 
it  was  by  his  own  original  genius,  was  such  as  to 
suggest  the  same  kind  of  inspiration — the  same 
kind,  not  the  same  degree — as  that  which  spoke  to 
men  through  the  writers  of  the  sacred  books  them- 
selves. What  was  it  in  these  labours  of  Milton 
that  seemed  chiefly  to  move  us  on  the  eve  of  the 
tercentenary  of  his  birth  to  add  to  the  wreaths 
laid  upon  his  tomb  by  future  generations  ?  In  the 
first  instance,  the  gift  which  was  his  in  so  marvel- 
lous a  measure  that  to  no  other  English  writer  at 
least,  in  prose  or  verse,  did  it  seem  so  distinctively 
to  belong  ;  the  gift,  too,  which  from  the  days  of 
his  youth  onwards  he  had  recognized  as  his,  and 
which  he  had  cultivated  with  religious  assiduity, 
in  sunshine  and  in  shade,  as  the  one  talent  which  it 
is  '  death  to  hide  ' — till  in  the  evening  of  his  days 
he  returned  it  tenfold  to  the  giver — the  gift  best 
defined  by  the  one  '  style/  The  early  poems 
showed  that  his  masters  and  teachers  had  judged 
him  aright,  by  striking  that  note  of  '  perfection  ' 
which  implied  the  constant  presence,  the  control- 
ling influence,  of  the  ideal.  That  gift  had  continued 
operative  when  he  had  exchanged  poetry  for 
prose.  He  followed,  in  different  essays,  different 
classical  models,  but  the  genius  of  Milton's  style 


40  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

was  not  one  which  could  take  its  form  from  prede- 
cessors or  rivals. 

"The  real  secret  of  Milton's  style  lay  far  deeper 
than  any  question  as  to  the  use  made  by  him  of  the 
stories  which  lay  open  to  him  as  a  student.     Even 
the  gladiatorial  passages  in  his  prose  at  times  suf- 
fered a  sea-change  and  turned  of  a  sudden  into  a 
thing  of  exquisite  beauty  and  celestial  loftiness — 
as  when  in  the  Second  Defence  he  rose  from  trivial 
retorts  upon  More's  scurrility  to  dwell  on  the  single 
topic  of  his  blindness.     Whence  came  this  power 
of  self-recovery  ?     Many  years  before  Milton  began 
to  write  Paradise  Lost  he  had  in  a  single  sentence 
unlocked  the  secret  of  the  power  supremely  attested 
by  that  work  and  its  sequel.      '  He  who  would  not 
be  frustrate  of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in 
laudable  things,  ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem/ 
That  elevation  of  soul  was  the  motive  force  of 
Milton's  genius  and  the  chief  formative  element 
in  the  growth  and  consummation  of  his  style. " 

The  Times  of  December  9  printed  in  large  type  a 
poem  by  George  Meredith  written  for  the  occasion, 
and  if  you  want  to  see  how  far  behind  Milton  in 
language,  rhythm,  dignity  of  expression  and  intel- 
ligible sense  the  so-called  poets  of  to-day  come 
panting  on  his  track,  you  have  only  to  read  the 
poem  if  you  can,  but  you  will  be  able  to  judge  if  I 
give  you  the  last  twelve  lines — 

We  need  him  now, 
This  latest  Age  in  repetition  ciies  : 
For  Belial,  the  adroit,  is  in  our  midst ; 
Mammon,  more  swoln  to  squeeze  the  slavish  sweat 
From  hopeless  toil :    and  overshadow ingly 
(Aggrandized,  monstrous  in  his  grinning  mask 
Of  hypocritical  Peace),  inveterate  Moloch 
Remains  the  great  example. 


John  Milton  41 

Homage  to  him 

His  debtor  band,  innumerable  as  waves 
Running  all  golden  from  an  eastern  sun, 
Joyfully  render,  in  deep  reverence 
Subscribe,  and  as  they  speak  their  Milton's  name, 
Rays  of  his  glory  on  their  foreheads  bear. 

It  will  take  the  taste  of  sawdust  out  of  our 
mouths  perhaps  if  we  read  now  Wordsworth's 
sonnet  called  London  1802. 

Milton  !  thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour  : 

England  hath  need  of  thee  :  she  is  a  fen 

Of  stagnant  waters  :  Altar,  sword,  and  pen, 

Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower 

Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  Dower 

Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men  ; 

Oh  !  raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again  ; 

And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  powers. 

Thy  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart  : 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea, 

Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free. 

So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way, 

In  cheerful  godliness  ;  and  yet  thy  heart 

The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay. 

Compare  Meredith's  polysyllables  "  overshadow- 
ingly,"  "  aggrandized/'  "  hypocritical  "  and  ''in- 
veterate/' all  in  three  lines,  with  the  simple  mono- 
syllabic purity  of  "  Thy  soul  was  like  a  star,  and 
dwelt  apart  :  Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was 
like  the  sea."  That  was  written  about  a  hundred 
years  ago.  But  to  show  that  we  still  have  men 
who  can  write  prose  if  not  verse  I  will  now  quote 
you  a  part  of  the  Leading  Article  in  The  Times  of 
December  9  : — 

"  A  famous  passage  in  Johnson's  Life  of  Milton 
begins  with  these  words  :  '  Fancy  can  hardly  for- 
bear to  conjecture  with  what  temper  Milton  sur- 
veyed the  silent  progress  of  his  work,  and  marked 


42  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

his  reputation  stealing  its  way  in  a  kind  of  sub- 
terranean current  through  fear  and  silence/  When 
this  was  written,  about  a  century  after  Milton's 
death,  fear  and  silence  had  long  ceased.  He  was 
then  esteemed  the  only  English  poet  comparable 
in  greatness  to  Shakespeare  ;  and  now  that  we  are 
celebrating  the  tercentenary  of  his  birth  he  still 
holds  the  same  rank,  although  in  the  interval  many 
great  poets  have  lived,  although  there  has  been  a 
revolution  in  the  theory  and  practice  of  poetry, 
and  although  his  conception  of  the  universe  seems 
more  strange  and  remote  with  every  new  addition 
made  to  human  knowledge  and  experience.  Mil- 
ton himself  seems  strange  and  remote  to  us,  not 
merely  because  he  was  born  300  years  ago,  but 
because  he  varied,  far  more  than  most  great  poets, 
from  the  kindly  race  of  men.  All  his  life  he  was 
travelling  further  and  further  away  from  sym- 
pathy with  them.  He  was  withdrawn,  not  only 
by  his  blindness,  but  by  the  action  of  his  own  mind, 
from  that  intercourse  with  his  fellows  by  which 
the  genius  of  Shakespeare  must  have  been  inces- 
santly inspired  and  enriched.  True,  he  was  not 
a  mere  dreamer,  but  a  man  of  affairs,  the  fierce 
partisan  of  the  victors  in  the  Civil  War,  and  the 
servant  of  their  great  leader.  It  was  certainly  not 
timidity  or  inexperience  that  estranged  him  from 
the  world,  but  rather  the  conviction,  strengthened 
by  experience,  that  he  was  unlike  other  men,  and 
that  he  was  right  to  be  unlike  them.  He  had 
little  in  common  even  with  his  own  allies.  He  is 
often  called  the  Puritan  poet ;  but,  beyond  a  high 
disdain  for  incontinence  and  all  vulgar  pleasures, 
there  was  nothing  Puritanic  about  him.  The 


John  Milton  43 

author  of  Comus  was  writing  as  a  Royalist  for 
Royalists  when  he  gave  the  world  that  best  of  all 
masks.  He  had  no  Puritan  fear  of  delight  or  dis- 
trust of  the  senses  ;  and,  though  he  was  a  repub- 
lican and  against  all  ritual  in  the  worship  of  men, 
he  excels  in  describing  the  pomp  and  ritual  of 
Heaven.  The  difference  between  his  poetry  and 
the  poetry  of  Anglicans  like  Herbert  and  Vaughan 
is  the  very  opposite  of  what  we  should  expect  from 
their  opinions.  They  try  to  set  up  a  lonely  and 
intimate  relation  between  God  and  themselves  and 
to  tell  secrets  that  are  not  to  be  overheard  even  by 
the  Angels.  But  his  imagination  is  content  with 
the  Kingdom,  the  Power,  and  the  Glory.  He 
who  questioned  all  earthly  authority,  was  far  less 
concerned  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men  than 
these  lesser  and  more  anxious  poets.  He  had  so 
despotic  a  mind  that  unconsciously  he  took  the 
ways  of  God  to  be  his  own  ways  and  condemned 
all  who  were  against  him  as  rebels  against  the 
Divine  order.  .  .  . 

"  Milton,  if  he  were  alive  now,  would  not  ask 
for  our  love.  He  would  demand  that  his  nature 
should  be  judged  by  its  fruits.  As  a  poet,  he 
would  be  content  that  we  should  not  understand 
him,  provided  we  understood  his  poetry.  He  lived 
to  make  poetry,  and  everything  else  that  he  did 
was  mere  by-play.  Thus  he  passed  through  the 
angers  of  controversy  unharmed  to  that  business 
which  he  had  chosen  for  himself  in  youth,  when  he 
had  been  inwardly  prompted  to  '  leave  something 
so  \vritten  to  aftertimes  as  they  should  not  will- 
ingly let  it  die/  Poetry  to  him  was  not  a  mere 
escape  from  reality,  but  the  ordering  and  perfect- 


44  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

ing  of  reality  as  if  it  were  his  own  kingdom  to 
make  what  he  would  of  it. 

"  His  art  was  not  impoverished  by  any  distrust 
of  beauty,  nor  made  vague  by  any  metaphysical 
misgivings.  With  all  his  ardour  for  perfection, 
he  never  tried  to  unthink  the  material  substance 
of  things,  to  imagine  a  delight  not  communicable 
through  the  senses,  or  a  purpose  in  life  beyond  the 
comprehension  of  man.  His  mind  was  habitually 
occupied  with  ideas  of  the  noblest  kind  of  life 
possible  to  man  ;  and  these  he  has  expressed  in 
clear  unfaltering  music,  in  poems  of  sure  and 
lucid  beauty. 

"  We  think  of  ideals  as  vague  things  and  of  ideal 
art  as  emptied  of  all  character.  But  Milton's  ideals 
were  drawn  from  life,  from  his  own  life,  and  what- 
ever he  represented  that  was  contrary  to  them  he 
drew  from  that  lower  life  of  the  world  which  he 
saw  clearly  from  his  own  eminence.  .  .  . 

"  Milton,  even  in  his  blindness,  is  scarcely 
pathetic,  because  he  is  above  pity.  The  loss  of 
sight  was  but  a  change  of  circumstance  to  him  ; 
and  no  change  of  circumstance  could  touch  that 
inner  life  which  his  spirit  lived  withdrawn  from  all 
the  imperfections  of  this  world.  His  firmness  of 
purpose  was  hardly  tested,  indeed,  by  the  triumph 
of  his  enemies,  as  well  as  by  his  own  blindness  ; 
but  it  endured  all  tests  and  triumphed  over  them 
in  the  song  of  his  old  age,  when — 


He,  though  blind  of  sight, 

Despised,  and  thought  extinguished  quite, 

With  inward  eyes  illuminated, 

His  fiery  virtue  roused 

From  under  ashes  into  sudden  flame. 


John  Milton  45 

"  Samson  Agonistes  seems  to  be  something  more 
than  a  work  of  art.  It  moves  us,  when  we  read  it, 
like  an  heroic  action,  for  it  represents,  not  an 
ideal  state  of  being,  but  what  Milton  had  made  of 
his  own  life.  Through  blindness  and  defeat  he  had 
attained  to  this,  that  without  presumption  or  any 
violence  to  truth  he  could  be  the  theme  and  hero 
of  his  own  finest  verse.  Thus  the  great  design  of 
his  life  was  accomplished,  and  thus  he  is  remem- 
bered by  posterity/' 

Milton  read  continuously  but  not  for  the  sake 
of  learning ;  he  chose  the  best  of  all  the  literature 
of  all  the  ages  on  which  to  form  an  ideal  style,  but 
it  is  hard  to  say  which  we  most  wonder  at,  Milton's 
immense  erudition,  or  the  sweetness  of  his  exquisite 
early  poems,  or  the  vigour  of  his  defence  of  freedom 
and  liberty,  or  the  patience  with  which,  knowing 
his  poetic  calling,  he  could  for  twenty  long  years 
put  it  all  aside  to  minister  to  his  country's  needs. 
As  soon  as  he  left  the  University  he  began  to  formu- 
late what  he  proposed  to  himself  as  his  life's  task, 
the  writing  of  some  great  dramatic  or  epic  poem, 
which  should  be  an  ornament  to  the  English 
language.  On  this  he  spent  years  of  patient  labour, 
and  if  we  will  take  the  trouble  to  study  it,  the  great- 
est of  all  his  attainments  we  shall  unquestionably 
find  to  be  his  blank  verse,  of  which  he  was  so 
great  a  master  that  it  was  called  by  Hazlitt,  "  the 
only  blank  verse  in  the  language,  except  Shake- 
speare's, that  deserves  the  name  of  verse."  The 
mere  sound  of  his  lines  can  sweep  us  along  through 
the  books  of  Paradise  Lost.  His  very  lists  of  the 
names  of  places  fill  us  with  a  singular  delight  such 
as  only  Virgil  can  at  all  bestow.  Listen  to  this — 


46  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

From  Arachosia,  from  Candaor  East, 
And  Margiana,  to  the  Hyrcanian  cliffs 
Of  Caucasus,  and  dark  Iberian  dales  : 
From  Atropatra  and  the  neighbouring  plains 
Of  Adiabene,  Media,  and  the  South 
Of  Susiana,  to  Balsuras  haven. 

What  pomp  and  pageantry  of  sound  !     Think  of 
these  lines — 

Where  the  bright  Seraphim  in  burning  row 
Their  loud  uplifted  angel  trumpets  blow. 

Can  anything  be  grander  ? 

What  makes  him  hard  to  enter  into  and  perhaps 
frightens  some  people  off  from  studying  him  as  he 
deserves,  is  the  fact  noticed  by  the  writer  of  the 
Milton  Article  in  The  Times  Literary  Supplement 
of  December  3,  that  "  by  the  sheer  force  of  intel- 
lect, imagination  and  purpose  Milton  imposed  him- 
self upon  England,  upon  her  thought,  her  character, 
her  poetry/'  a  truly  stupendous  achievement.  The 
writer  goes  on  to  say  that,  "  The  familiar  strength 
and  sweetness  of  his  lyric  poems  has  never  been 
compassed  again  ;  and  his  blank  verse  in  the  form 
in  which  he  uses  it  remains  the  finest  utterance. 
It  is  to  Milton's  poetry  that  men  turn  when  they 
feel  oppressed  by  the  laxity  and  indifference  of  less 
strenuous  times  ;  and  even  those  who  disagree 
with  him  find  themselves  caught  up  and  swept 
away  by  the  might  and  majesty  of  his  soaring. 
Other  poets  we  may  love,  before  Milton  we  bow 
the  head." 

In  order  to  give  some  idea  of  the  grandeur  of  Mil- 
ton's blank  verse,  the  following  selections  were  read 
at  one  of  our  meetings. 


John  Milton 


47 


Paradise  Lost. 


I.       1-26. 

I57-I9I. 

192-240. 

241-282. 

283-330. 

710-751. 

II.  666-726. 

HI.      1-55. 

213-265. 


344-371- 
IV.  205-279. 

598-609. 

634-658. 

V.  152-208. 

893-904. 

VI.   189-219. 
VII.       1-39. 


The  minor  poems  and  Samson  Agonistes  were   read 
on  another  occasion. 


AN  INTRODUCTION 

TO 
MILTON'S  MASK  "  COMUS  " 

THE  Drama  which  was  handed  down  by  Greece 
to  Rome  tended  to  decadence  throughout  the 
Roman  period.  The  people  of  Rome  loved  comedy 
more  than  tragedy  and  comedy  was  of  two  kinds, 
"  Palliata,"  which  was  in  origin  and  style  Greek, 
and  used  by  Ennius,  Plautus  and  Terence,  and 
"  T ogata"  which  was  native  ;  and  this,  being 
fresher,  survived  longer  than  the  other,  but  as  it 
was  also  coarser  in  tone,  it  degenerated  into  buf- 
foonery and  scurrility  and  became  a  sort  of  panto- 
mime in  which  dance  and  song  and  gesticulation 
by  a  single  masked  performer  enchained  the  admir- 
ing crowd  by  suiting  itself  to  the  demands  of  a 
reckless  and  sensual  age,  and  thus  the  stage  eventu- 
ally contributed  as  much  to  the  demoralization  of 
the  Roman  world  as  did  the  bloody  spectacles  in 
the  amphitheatre  and  the  maddening  excitement 
of  the  chariot  races. 

The  whole  authority  of  the  Christian  Church  was 
naturally  against  it ;  and  when  the  faith  of  that 
Church  became  the  acknowledged  religion  of  the 
Roman  Empire  the  doom  of  the  theatre  was  sealed. 

The  attitude  taken  up  by  the  Church  towards 
the  stage  was  unavoidable,  and  little  did  the  Church 


Milton's  Mask  "  C omits  "  49 

think  that  she  would  herself  become  the  nursing 
mother  of  the  new  birth  of  an  art  which  seemed 
then  incapable  of  regeneration. 

In  the  fourth  century  actors  and  mountebanks 
were  excluded  from  the  benefit  of  Christian  Sacra- 
ments, but  the  profession  was  never  quite  sup- 
pressed, and  the  "  Mimes  "  became  a  wandering 
fraternity.  And  we  may  here  note  that  up  to  quite 
recent  times  "  actors  and  vagrants  "  were  always 
classed  together  in  English  law.  These  "  Vagrom 
men/'  as  Dogberry  calls  them,  appeared  at  festi- 
vals, went  through  their  performance,  and  then 
vanished  into  obscurity,  handing  down  in  this 
strange  manner  the  traditions  of  the  acting  drama 
of  pagan  antiquity  to  the  succeeding  ages. 

In  the  midst  of  this  condemnation  of  the  stage 
by  the  Christian  Church,  occasional  Ecclesiastics 
wrote,  for  educational  purposes,  both  tragic  and 
comic  plays.  These  include  one  attributed  to  St. 
Gregory  Nazianzen  called  The  Passion  of  Christ 
and  written  about  the  end  of  the  fourth  century 
A.D.  More  than  five  hundred  years  later,  between 
the  ninth  and  twelfth  centuries,  martyrdoms  and 
miracles  from  the  legends  of  the  Christian  saints 
formed  the  themes  not  infrequently  of  plays  in 
both  Germany  and  France  which  reached  England 
after  the  Norman  Conquest  and  formed  what  we 
call  the  Monastic  Drama.  Of  this  nature  was 
The  Play  of  St.  Katharine,  acted  at  Dunstable  about 
noo  "  in  copes  "  by  the  scholars  of  the  Norman 
Geoffrey  afterwards  Abbot  of  St.  Albans.  All  that 
we  know  of  it  is  that  when  it  was  acted  it  was  not 
regarded  as  a  novelty. 

But  to  go  back  : — In  the  fifth  century,  in  order 

E 


50  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

to  increase  the  attractions  of  public  worship,  on 
special  occasions  living  pictures  were  introduced 
in  the  churches,  illustrating  the  Gospel  narrative, 
and  accompanied  by  songs.  These  representa- 
tions were  not  mere  tableaux,  action  was  allowed, 
and  thus  the  Shepherds,  the  Innocents,  and  the 
scenes  at  the  Holy  Sepulchre  and  at  the  Resurrec- 
tion were  presented  on  festival  days  by  the  priests  ; 
and  then  the  epical  part  was  added  to  the  specta- 
cular, the  Mystery  Play  came  into  existence,  cer- 
tainly as  early  as  the  tenth  century.  These 
mysteries  were  written  plays,  but  all  in  Latin,  and 
in  connexion  at  first  with  the  Gospel  of  the  day, 
but,  going  beyond  the  Gospel  story,  they  became 
eventually  divided  into  three  classes  according  to 
their  subject  matter,  and  these  were  Mysteries, 
Miracle  Plays  and  Moralities.  Mysteries  set  forth 
Scriptural  scenes  only,  and  dealt  with  the  mystery 
of  the  Redemption,  Nativity,  Passion  and  Resur- 
rection. Miracle  Plays  were  mostly  concerned 
with  the  legends  of  the  saints  ;  and  Moralities 
illustrated  Gospel  truths  allegorically,  their  char- 
acters being  the  personified  virtues  and  vices. 
These  last  were  the  invention  of  the  Norman 
Trouveres  of  whom  we  spoke  when  discussing  the 
Arthurian  legends. 

Allegory  had  a  singular  attraction  for  people  of 
that  time,  and  these  plays  gradually  came  to  be 
too  well  attended  to  be  kept  within  the  walls  of  a 
church,  and  were  therefore  acted  outside,  and,  what 
was  a  still  more  important  innovation,  in  the  vulgar 
tongue  ;  and  a  comic  element  was  introduced  to 
suit  the  humour  of  the  audience,  each  successive 
company  of  actors  striving  to  make  the  well- 


Milton's  Mask  "  Comus  "  51 

known  comic  characters  more  funny  ;  whence,  as 
Herod  was  a  stock  comic  figure,  came  the  phrase 
"  out-Heroding  Herod." 

In  Cornwall  you  may  still  see  some  of  the  out- 
door grassy  amphitheatres  in  which  Cornish  Mira- 
cle Plays  were  performed  in  the  native  Cymric 
dialect.  There  is  one  at  St.  Just  in  North  Cornwall 
not  unlike  the  grassy  circle  at  Eamont-bridge  near 
Penrith  in  Cumberland,  but  smaller.  Indeed, 
this  larger  circle  is  often  said  to  have  been  an  arena 
for  knightly  jousts  and  tournaments. 

In  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  City 
Trading  Companies  performed  plays  in  several 
towns  throughout  England.  We  have  the  Chester 
and  Coventry  Plays  and  the  Towneley  Plays 
acted  at  Woodkirk  near  Wakefield  in  Yorkshire- 
and  others  were  given  at  Newcastle,  York,  Lan- 
caster, Leeds,  Kendal,  Wymondham,  Dublin  and 
London  in  which  last  place  the  players  were  the 
parish  clerks. 

These  plays  were  called  after  the  company  that 
exhibited  them  the  "  Glovers/'  or  "  Fishers  " 
pageants,  and  were  given  on  a  high  scaffold  with 
two  rooms  one  above  the  other  open  at  the  top 
and  mounted  on  four  wheels.  In  the  lower  room 
the  actors  dressed,  and  played  in  the  upper  one  ; 
and  after  one  "  performance  "  the  whole  erection 
was  wheeled  to  another  street  till  all  the  main 
streets  of  a  town  had  had  their  "  pageant  "  as  it 
was  called.  A  Herald  spoke  the  prologue  and  at 
times  horsemen  would  ride  up  to  the  scaffold  as 
part  of  the  show,  or  Herod  would  be  instructed 
to  go  and  "  rage  in  the  street/'  This  same  Herod 
was  always  dressed  as  a  Saracen,  the  demons  wore 


52  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

hideous  heads,  the  souls  were  clad  in  black  or 
white  coats  according  to  their  kind,  Divine  or 
saintly  personages  wore  gilt  hair  and  beards,  and 
the  angels  had  gold  skins  and  wings.  "  Hell 
mouth  "  was  a  pit  at  the  side  of  the  stage  which 
occasionally  displayed  fire,  and  allowed  the  Demons 
entrance  and  exit. 

Thus  those  City  Company  Plays  exhibited  the 
characteristics  of  both  Mysteries  and  Miracle 
Plays,  and  also  later  of  Moralities  ;  and  then,  to 
lighten  the  allegories,  the  Devil  and  his  attendant 
Vice,  were  introduced  to  provide  the  amusing 
element. 

About  the  eleventh  century  the  transition  from 
the  allegorical  Morality  to  the  Regular  Drama  was 
brought  about  by  adding  to  the  abstractions  of 
Virtue  and  Vice  some  historical  personages  and 
types  of  real  life  ;  and  about  1565  what  were  called 
Interludes  were  invented  by  John  Heywood  who 
was  distinctly  a  man  of  genius.  These  were  farci- 
cal scenes  from  real  life,  often,  no  doubt,  coarse, 
but  the  occasional  excessive  grossness  was  due  to 
an  absence  of  refinement  in  all  ranks  of  life  rather 
than  to  any  moral  obliquity.  Thus  the  allegorical 
plays  were  undermined,  and  the  advent  of  comedy 
facilitated.  But  the  Moralities  and  Miracle  Plays 
survived  right  into  the  Elizabethan  age,  at  which 
period  the  regular  drama  reached  its  highest  point 
when,  under  Shakespeare,  the  stage  "  held  the 
Mirror  up  to  Nature  "  and  delineated  character  of 
every  kind.  It  was  mainly  in  the  generation  which 
succeeded  Shakespeare  that  the  form  of  what  is 
called  the  Later  Elizabethan  Drama  rose  and  flour- 
ished, This  had  a  twofold  expression  in  what  is 


Milton's  Mask  "  Counts  "  53 

termed  The  Pastoral  Drama  and  The  Mask.  The 
former  was  an  exotic  derived  from  the  old  classical 
poets  of  Greece  and  Sicily.  But  Ben  Jonson  by 
the  fresh  simplicity  of  his  treatment,  and  Fletcher 
by  the  beauty  of  his  poetic  execution,  managed  to 
nationalize  it,  as  far  as  so  essentially  foreign  a 
growth  could  be  made  to  flourish  on  English  soil, 
and  gave  it  a  secure  footing  in  the  high  places  of 
English  literature.  The  best  specimens  of  the 
kind  are  Ben  Jonson 's  unfinished  work,  "  The  Sad 
Shepherd  "  and  "  The  Youthful  Shepherdess  "  of 
Fletcher ;  both  these  are  what  we  call  pastoral 
plays. 

The  Mask  was  a  more  elastic  composition,  and 
embraced  declamation,  dialogue,  music,  dancing, 
and  elaborate  scenery  and  mechanical  surprises 
which  outdid  the  transformation  scenes  of  the 
early  or  mid- Victorian  pantomime.  When  there 
was  least  of  literary  effort  in  it  and  most  of  scenic 
ornament  and  device,  the  Mask  closely  resembled 
the  pre-Shakespearian  "  pageant  "  ;  but  when  the 
literary  part  predominated,  with  distinct  charac- 
ters and  fullness  of  action,  it  was  more  like  the 
regular  drama.  The  Mask  was  a  frequent  orna- 
ment of  Queen  Elizabeth's  royal  progresses,  and 
was  cultivated  with  such  assiduity  in  the  reign 
of  James  I  that  it  quite  outshone  the  attractions 
of  the  ordinary  stage,  and  in  the  next  reign,  that 
of  Charles  I,  Inigo  Jones  worked  with  such  lavish 
splendour,  designing  scenic  effects  of  so  costly  and 
complicated  a  kind,  with  gorgeous  buildings,  land- 
scapes, and  clouds  or  mountains  which  opened  to 
display  mimic  deities,  thrown  into  relief  by  coloured 
lights,  that  one  Mask  alone  is  said  to  have  cost 


54  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

£21,000.  In  these  costly  productions  Ben  Jonson 
received  no  more  for  his  libretto,  which  was  studded 
with  beautiful  lyrical  gems,  than  did  Inigo  Jones 
for  his  scenic  devices  ;  this  so  annoyed  him  that 
he  satirized  Inigo  Jones  and  the  latter  left  him 
and  applied  for  libretto  to  Sir  William  Davenant 
and  they  collaborated  at  the  production  in  1634 
of  a  Mask  called  The  Temple  of  Love.  Most  of  the 
Elizabethans  contributed  to  this  kind  of  play. 
But  the  richness  and  fullness  of  Ben  Jonson 's  genius 
cannot  be  fully  appreciated  until  you  have  read 
his  Masks  which  hold  a  permanent  place  in  Eng- 
lish literature.  He  said  that  next  himself  only 
Fletcher  and  Chapman  could  write  a  Mask,  and 
certainly  he  was  by  far  the  most  successful  in  his 
time,  but  he  lived  long  enough  to  see  and  acknow- 
ledge the  poetic  masterpiece  of  this  species  in 
Milton's  Comus,  after  which  it  soon  faded  away 
in  times  too  fierce  to  admit  of  its  further  cultiva- 
tion. Had  it  not  been  for  the  civil  wars  the  Mask 
was  a  form  of  such  great  and  proved  flexibility 
that  it  might  well  have  been  made  more  of,  and  as 
a  fact  it  does  reappear  in  later  times  merged  in  the 
Opera. 


GRAY 

1716-1771 

THOMAS  GRAY  was  born  in  Cornhill,  December  26, 
1716.  His  father  was  an  Exchange  broker, 
clever  but  extravagant,  brutal  in  his  treatment  of 
his  wife — and  probably  half  insane  ;  he  took  no 
interest  in  his  children  and  did  nothing  for  Thomas, 
who  alone  out  of  a  family  of  twelve  lived  beyond 
infancy.  His  mother  was  a  Miss  Dorothy  Antro- 
bus,  who  with  her  sister  Mary  kept  a  milliner's 
shop  in  the  city,  which  was  her  only  means  of 
support  as  her  husband,  though  wealthy,  gave  her 
nothing.  Another  sister,  Anna,  married  a  lawyer 
called  Rogers.  Two  of  her  brothers  were  Eton 
Masters  and  Fellows  of  their  Colleges,  Robert  of 
Peterhouse  and  Thomas  of  King's  College.  Robert 
had  given  the  boy  a  home  at  Burnham  near  Slough 
where  he  taught  him  botany,  and  at  the  age  of  n 
he  was  sent  to  Eton,  but  Robert  died  when  the 
boy  was  thirteen  and  Thomas  then  took  charge  of 
his  education  both  at  school  and  at  College,  the 
father  declining  to  give  his  son  any  education 
whatever,  and  not  even  finding  him  in  clothes  ; 
so  that  the  whole  expense  of  his  upbringing  was 
borne  by  his  mother,  whose  devotion  was  repaid 
by  the  life-long  and  passionate  attachment  of  her 
son. 

55 


56  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

At  Eton  he  formed  lasting  friendships  with 
three  boys,  Horace  Walpole,  son  of  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter, who  was  a  year  younger  than  Gray,  Richard 
West,  who  was  a  few  months  older  than  Walpole 
and  whose  father  became  Lord  Chancellor  of  Ire- 
land, and  Thomas  Ashton.  He  had  other  boy 
friends  but  none  so  near  his  heart  or  of  such  close 
intimacy  as  Walpole  and  West.  Walpole  and 
Gray  were  both  weakly  children  and  took  no  part 
in  any  athletic  exercises  except  that  of  swimming, 
a  thing  not  so  noticeable  then  as  it  would  be  now. 

After  seven  years  at  Eton  the  friends  separated, 
Ashton  and  Gray  going  in  1734  to  Cambridge,  Wal- 
pole to  London  for  the  winter  before  entering  the 
University,  and  West  to  Oxford.  Gray  went  first 
to  Pembroke  Hall  and  soon  moved  to  Peterhouse 
as  a  pensioner.  A  Latin  exercise  of  Gray's, 
written  when  he  was  an  Eton  boy,  shows  him  to 
have  been  both  a  scholar  and  a  thinker  beyond  his 
years,  and  as  early  as  1736  a  letter  to  Walpole 
shows  that  feeling  for  the  picturesque  and  love  of 
Nature  which  was  his  great  characteristic  through 
life,  and  which  he  was  absolutely  the  first  to  culti- 
vate and  set  before  others.  His  life  at  Cambridge 
and  the  prescribed  studies  were  not  to  Gray's  taste, 
and  he  left  in  1738  without  taking  his  degree.  In 
1739-41  he  travelled  in  France  and  Italy  with 
Walpole,  who  paid  all  expenses,  and  of  his  letters 
home  the  Poet  Cowper,  himself  one  of  the  best  of 
letter- writers,  says  :  "I  once  thought  Swift's 
letters  the  best  that  could  be  written,  but  I  like 
Gray's  better."  Five  letters  out  of  twenty-nine 
which  are  preserved  of  this  period  were  addressed 
to  his  father,  who  died  in  November,  1741,  two 


Gray  57 

months  after  Gray's  return.  In  the  following 
year  his  uncle,  Mr,  Rogers,  died,  and  he  and  his 
mother  and  aunt  went  to  live  with  Mrs.  Rogers  at 
Stoke  Pogis  near  Eton.  At  the  end  of  1741  Gray 
began  to  write  English  poetry  and  produced  a 
scene  of  the  tragedy  Agrippina  ;  but  1742  was 
the  great  year  for  him.  In  that  one  year  he  wrote 
at  Stoke  Pogis  his  Ode  on  the  Spring,  On  a  Distant 
Prospect  of  Eton  College,  his  Sonnet  on  the  Death  of 
West,  and  The  Hymn  to  Adversity,  and  began  his 
famous  Elegy.  Gray  was  now  26,  but  he  did  not 
publish  any  of  these  poems  till  he  was  31.  He  had 
sent  Agrippina  to  West  for  criticism  and  also  early 
in  June  sent  him  the  Ode  on  the  Spring,  but  it  was 
returned  to  him  as  West  had  died  on  the  ist  of  the 
month.  This  loss,  and  the  death  about  the  same 
time  of  his  uncle,  William  Antrobus,  greatly  affected 
him  and  were  the  cause  of  the  gloomy  view  he 
takes  of  life  in  his  Ode  on  Eton,  which,  published  in 
pamphlet  form  in  1747,  was  the  first  of  his  poems 
to  appear  in  print,  but  without  his  name. 

Next  year  this  and  the  Ode  on  the  Spring  and  On 
the  Death  of  a  Favourite  Cat  came  out  in  Dodsley's 
Collection,  also  without  the  author's  name. 

After  the  productive  summer  at  Stoke  Pogis  his 
flow  of  verse  abruptly  ceased,  and  he  went  back 
to  Peterhouse  and  took  his  degree  in  1744  as  LL.B.  ; 
and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  Cambridge  was  his  home, 
He  read  hard  for  four  or  five  years,  chiefly  at  Greek 
History  and  Literature.  Early  in  1751  and  in 
order  to  anticipate  the  editor  of  a  magazine,  Gray, 
through  Walpole,  got  Dodsley  to  publish  his  Elegy 
which  he  had  taken  up  again  at  Stoke  Pogis  on  the 
death  of  his  Aunt  Mary  in  1749,  and  finished  in  the 


58  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

following  year.  It  was  published  in  a  quarto 
pamphlet  on  February  16,  1751,  entitled,  An  Elegy 
Wrote  in  a  Country  Churchyard,  price  sixpence. 
The  poem,  whose  authorship  was  soon  known,  made 
him  famous  at  once ;  it  soon  reached  an  eleventh 
edition,  and  appeared  in  all  magazines  and  collec- 
tions and  was  translated  into  all  languages,  but 
the  greatest  tribute  of  all  was  paid  to  the  Elegy 
in  1759  when  Wolfe,  silently  floating  down  the  St. 
Lawrence  on  September  13,  the  night  before  the 
battle  on  the  Plains  of  Abraham,  repeated  most  of 
the  stanzas  to  the  other  officers  in  the  boat,  and  at 
the  end  said,  "  Now,  gentlemen,  I  would  rather  be 
the  author  of  that  poem  than  take  Quebec." 

In  1755  by  Walpole's  persuasion  a  handsome 
edition  of  his  Poems  was  published  with  drawings 
by  Richard  Bentley  ;  modestly  entitled  by  Gray. 
Designs  by  Mr.  R.  Bentley  for  Six  Poems  by  Mr.  T. 
Gray.  The  poems  were  the  three  already  pub- 
lished in  Dodsley's  Collection  in  1748,  and  also  the 
Hymn  to  Adversity,  A  Long  Story,  written  in  1750, 
and  The  Elegy. 

In  this  edition  Gray  omitted  "  the  redbreast 
stanza,"  which,  charming  as  it  is,  does  not  seem  to 
be  wanted  where  it  had  originally  stood,  viz.,  after 
line  116  and  just  before  the  Epitaph.  The  stanza 
was  as  follows  : — 

There  scattered  oft,  the  earliest  of  the  year, 
By  hands  unseen,  are  showers  of  violets  found ; 

The  redbreast  loves  to  build,  and  warble  there, 
And  little  footsteps  lightly  print  the  ground. 

In  the  same  month  that  the  edition  came  out, 
March  1753,  Gray's  mother  died.  Gray's  inscrip- 


Gray  59 

tion  on  the  family  tombstone  at  Stoke  Pogis  runs 
thus  :— 

"  In  the  Vault  beneath,  are  deposited,  in  hope  of  a 
joyful  resurrection,  the  remains  of  Mary  Antrobus.  She 
died  unmarried,  Nov.  5,  1749,  aged  66.  In  the  same 
pious  confidence,  beside  her  friend  and  sister,  here  sleep 
the  remains  of  Dorothy  Gray,  widow,  the  careful  tender 
Mother  of  many  children,  one  of  whom  alone  had  the 
misfortune  to  survive  her.  She  died  March  n,  1753, 
aged  67. 

Neither  his  mother  nor  his  aunts  were  ever  aware 
that  he  wrote  in  verse,  nor  would  he  avow  it  to 
them,  "  lest  they  should  burn  me  for  a  poet." 

In  1756  Gray  re-migrated  from  Peterhouse  to 
Pembroke.  He  was  then  in  poor  health  and  con- 
tinued to  be  so  until  the  end  of  his  life.  He  died 
in  College  on  July  30,  1771,  in  his  55th  year. 
His  poetry  has  been  divided  into  three  stages, 
first  his  early  Odes  which  were  written  for  his 
friends,  secondly  his  Elegy  which  was  written  for 
Mankind,  and  finally  his  Pindaric  Odes  which 
were  written  for  Poets. 

The  first  of  these  Pindaric  Odes,  The  Progress 
of  Poesy,  was  completed  in  1754,  and  sent  to  his 
friend  Dr.  Wharton  with  the  remark,  "  If  this  be 
as  tedious  to  you  as  it  has  grown  to  me  I  shall  be 
sorry  that  I  sent  it  to  you." 

Next  year  he  was  at  work  on  The  Bard,  which  was 
not  completed  till  1757.  Both  these  odes  are 
on  the  pattern  used  by  Pindar.  They  are  divided 
into  three  parts  of  exactly  the  same  length,  and 
each  part  contains  three  divisions — a  Strophe, 
an  Antistrophe  and  an  Epode. 

Just  as  the  death  of  his  Aunt  Mary  caused  him 
to  take  up  again  and  complete  his  Elegy,  which 


60  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

was  begun  on  the  death  of  West,  so  the  hearing 
of  some  concerts  given  by  John  Parry,  the  famous 
blind  harper,  set  him  going  again  with  The  Bard 
which  had  long  hung  fire.  Horace  Walpole  per- 
suaded Gray  to  allow  the  Pindaric  Odes  to  be  the 
first  issue  of  the  press  he  had  set  up  at  Strawberry 
Hill,  and  on  June  29,  1757,  Gray  received  from 
Dodsley  forty  guineas,  which  was  the  only  money 
he  ever  made  by  literature.  They  were  printed 
on  large  quarto  and  entitled  Odes  by  Mr.  Gray 
fywvavTa  crvveTois,  which  means  "  a  voice  to 
those  who  have  ears  to  hear."  This  publication 
put  Gray  at  the  head  at  once  of  the  living  English 
poets. 

And  we  may  here  pause  to  consider  who  the 
living  poets  were.  Pope  and  Swift  were  older 
than  Gray,  and  Goldsmith  and  Cowper  were 
younger,  and  though  Goldsmith  reviewed  the  Pin- 
daric Odes  he  had  not  yet  published  anything 
himself.  His  actual  contemporaries  were  Young, 
author  of  the  Night  Thoughts,  Thomson,  author 
of  The  Castle  of  Indolence,  Dr.  Johnson,  who  had 
published  his  London  in  1738,  and  Collins  who  had 
six  months  before  Gray  had  published  anything 
written  his  famous  Odes  in  1747.  There  was  not 
enough  stirring  in  the  literary  atmosphere  to  keep 
a  poet  going,  and  as  has  been  aptly  said,  "  The 
Wells  of  Poetry  were  stagnant  and  there  was  no 
Angel  to  strike  the  waters/' 

On  Colley  Gibber's  death,  in  the  year  1757, 
the  laureateship  was  offered  to  Gray  and  refused, 
and  was  then  accepted  by  Whitehead. 

Subsequently,  in  1768,  the  Chair  of  Modern 
History  and  Modern  Languages  was  offered  to  him 


Gray  61 

by  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  then  Prime  Minister, 
and  accepted.  It  was  worth  £400  a  year ;  the 
professor  was  recommended  always  to  find  a 
delegate  to  do  the  foreign  languages,  and  no  one 
until  after  his  time  had  ever  given  a  lecture  on 
Modern  History.  Gray  was  glad  of  the  salary, 
though  since  the  death  of  his  mother  he  had 
never  been  in  need.  In  Jan.  1768,  Gray,  who 
was  always  haunted  by  the  fear  of  fire,  was  saved 
from  a  conflagration  in  Pembroke  Hall. 

The  next  year  there  appeared  the  first  complete 
edition  of  such  poems  as  he  wished  to  publish ; 
they  were  ten  in  number,  the  six  previously  pub- 
lished, omitting  the  Long  Story,  and  the  two  Pin- 
daric Odes  and  three  others  of  which  The  Fatal 
Sisters  and  The  Descent  of  Odin  were  translated  by 
him  from  the  Icelandic,  and  The  Triumphs  of 
Owen  was  adapted  from  the  Welsh.  And  he  writes — 
"  With  all  this  I  am  but  a  shrimp  of  an  author.'' 
In  the  following  year  he  wrote  the  Installation 
Ode  on  the  appointment  of  the  Duke  of  Grafton 
as  Chancellor  of  the  University.  His  love  of 
Nature  already  alluded  to  and  his  discern- 
ment of  the  beauties  of  natural  scenery,  at  that 
time  quite  a  new  study,  led  him  to  make  tours  in 
many  parts  of  England  ;  and  the  descriptions  he 
gives  of  his  tour  in  the  Lakes  in  the  year  1769 
are  not  easily  surpassed.  He  also  travelled  in 
Scotland  and  in  Wales,  and  wrote  excellent  letters 
on  what  he  saw.  Then  he  not  only  had  an  eye  for 
beauty  and  grandeur  of  scenery,  but  he  had  a 
naturalist's  keen  observation  for  the  habits  of 
birds  and  the  appearance  of  wild  flowers,  and, 
being  a  student  of  architecture,  he  made  a  tour 


62  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

among  the  fine  churches  of  the  Fens  and  drew  up  a 
catalogue  of  the  antiquities  of  England  and  Wales. 

Of  his  letter- writing  we  have  heard  Cowper's 
testimony,  and  we  find  in  his  remarks  on  Eliza- 
bethan poetry  that  he  was  a  writer  of  no  mean 
order  in  the  days  when  criticism  was  at  a  very  low 
point.  He  knew  French  and  Icelandic  and  Italian, 
and  as  a  student  of  music  he  worked  hard  when  he 
went  with  Walpole  to  Italy,  making  a  large  collec- 
tion of  MS.  music  ;  and  at  the  same  time  he  studied 
painting,  sculpture  and  architecture,  of  which  he 
was  probably  the  first  modern  student.  Gosse  says 
"  his  mind  was  at  this  time  the  most  actively  acquisi- 
tive of  any  in  Europe."  But  in  spite  of  his  many 
interests,  all  his  life,  partly  no  doubt  owing  to 
feebleness  of  health,  he  was  subject  to  melancholy. 
He  writes  thus  about  it  to  West — "  Low  spirits  are 
my  true  and  faithful  companions  ;  they  get  up 
with  me,  go  to  bed  with  me,  make  journeys  and 
returns  as  I  do  ;  nay  and  pay  visits  and  will  even 
affect  to  be  jocose,  and  force  a  feeble  laugh  with 
me  ;  but  most  commonly  we  sit  together,  and  are 
the  prettiest  insipid  company  in  the  world.  How- 
ever, when  you  come  I  believe  they  must  undergo 
the  fate  of  all  humble  companions,  and  be  dis- 
carded." With  these  habits  of  mind  and  this 
feebleness  of  health  Gray  was  a  middle-aged  man 
at  25  and  took  up  at  that  age  the  quiet  life  of  a 
resident  in  College  rooms  at  Cambridge  and  there 
he  "  kept  the  noiseless  tenor  of  his  way  "  for  the 
rest  of  his  natural  existence. 

In  spite  of  this  tendency  to  melancholy  we  find 
in  his  letters  a  lively  wit  and  a  sense  of  humour 
which  make  them  delightful  reading,  and  this 


Gray  63 

trait  must  have  been  constantly  in  evidence  and 
have  contributed  to  his  almost  magnetic  power  of 
attracting  and  retaining  the  friendship  of  so  many 
excellent  people.  In  "  A  Sketch  of  the  Character 
of  the  Celebrated  Poet,  Mr.  Gray/'  contributed 
to  the  London  Magazine  by  Mr.  Temple  who,  when 
Fellow  of  Trinity  Hall,  had  known  Gray  at  Cam- 
bridge, we  find  the  following  :  "  Perhaps  Mr.  Gray 
was  the  most  learned  man  in  Europe  :  he  was 
equally  acquainted  with  the  elegant  and  profound 
parts  of  Science,  and  not  superficially  but  thor- 
oughly. He  knew  every  branch  of  history,  both 
Natural  and  Civil ;  had  read  all  the  original  his- 
torians of  England,  France  and  Italy ;  and 
was  a  great  antiquarian.  Criticism,  metaphysics, 
morals,  politics  made  a  principal  part  of  his 
plan  of  study.  Voyages  and  travels  of  all 
sorts  were  his  favourite  amusements  :  and  he  had 
a  fine  taste  in  painting,  prints,  architecture  and 
gardening.  With  such  a  fund  of  knowledge  his  con- 
versation must  have  been  equally  instructive  and 
entertaining.  But  he  was  also  a  good  man,  a  well 
bred  man,  a  man  of  virtue  and  humanity/'  He 
omits  to  notice  his  taste  and  skill  in  music,  and 
he  adds  that  "Though  he  seemed  to  value  others 
chiefly  according  to  the  progress  they  had  made  in 
knowledge,  yet  he  could  not  bear  to  be  considered 
himself  merely  as  a  man  of  letters  :  and  though 
without  birth  or  fortune  or  station,  his  desire  was 
to  be  looked  upon  as  a  private  gentleman  who  read 
for  his  amusement/'  Another  writer,  himself  an 
eminent  scholar,  also  speaks  of  him  as  "  perhaps 
the  most  learned  man  of  the  age  "  and,  after  allud- 
ing to  his  agreeable  conversation  says  "  superior 


64  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

knowledge,  an  exquisite  taste  in  the  fine  arts,  and 
above  all  purity  of  morals  and  an  unaffected  rever- 
ence for  religion,  made  him  an  ornament  to  society 
and  an  honour  to  human  nature/' 

The  desire  to  be  thought  a  gentleman  to  whom 
literature  was  an  amusement  rather  than  a  profes- 
sion may  account  for  the  desultory  manner  of  his 
composition,  with  its  fits  of  passing  inspiration 
severed  by  long  periods  of  poetical  inactivity.  In 
fact  he  so  constantly  broke  off  in  the  middle  of  a 
poem  that  when  some  years  after  its  commence- 
ment he  finished  his  Elegy  and  sent  it  to  Horace 
Walpole  he  wrote  with  it,  "  Having  put  an  end 
to  a  thing  whose  beginning  you  have  seen  long  ago  I 
immediately  send  it  to  you.  You  will,  I  hope, 
look  upon  it  in  the  light  of  a  thing  with  an  end  to 
it :  a  merit  that  most  of  my  writings  have  wanted 
and  are  like  to  want/1 

But  whatever  the  mode  of  the  composition  the 
results  are  of  the  very  highest  order.  Mr.  Gosse 
points  out  that  in  his  Ode  on  Adversity,  now  usually 
styled  a  hymn,  "  He  first  shows  that  stateliness  of 
movement  and  pomp  of  allegorical  illustration 
which  give  an  individuality  to  his  mature  style/1 
This  mature  style  is  seen  in  his  Pindaric  Odes  and 
in  the  famous  Elegy.  In  this  the  use  of  the  Heroic 
quatrain  with  alternate  rhymes,  in  which  Gray 
so  excels  all  others,  was  not  his  invention.  Gray 
knew  it  well  as  used  by  Sir  John  Davies  in  his 
poemNosceteipsum  (know  thyself )  printed  in  1599, 
and  he  was  evidently  familiar  with  a  quatrain  of 
West's— 

Ah  me  !  what  boots  us  all  our  boasted  power, 
Our  golden  treasures  and  our  purple  state ! 


Gray  65 

They  cannot  ward  the  inevitable  hour, 
Nor  stay  the  fearful  violence  of  fate. 

But  what  others  had  used  Gray  made  entirely  his 
own,  and  no  poem  was  produced  between  the  days 
of  Milton  and  Wordsworth  which  has  enjoyed  so 
high  a  reputation  in  literature  as  Gray's  Elegy.  Its 
fame  is  worldwide  and  always  fresh.  "  It  possesses/* 
says  Mr.  Gosse,  "  the  charm  of  incomparable  felicity, 
of  a  melody  that  is  not  too  subtle  to  charm  every 
ear,  of  a  moral  persuasiveness  that  appeals  to 
every  generation,  and  of  metrical  skill  that  in  each 
line  proclaims  the  Master.  The  Elegy  may  be 
looked  upon  as  the  typical  piece  of  English  verse, 
our  poem  of  poems  ;  not  that  it  is  the  most  bril- 
liant or  original  or  profound  lyric  of  our 
language,  but  because  it  combines  in  more  balanced 
perfection  than  any  other  all  the  qualities  that  go 
to  the  production  of  a  fine  poetical  effect."  1 

Mr.  Swinburne,  who  infinitely  preferred  Collins 
to  Gray  as  a  lyric  poet,  has  felt  impelled  by  "  the 
high  perfection  of  the  poem,  and  its  universal 
appeal  to  the  tenderest  and  noblest  depths  of 
human  feeling/'  to  admit  that  "  as  an  elegiac 
poet  Gray  holds  for  all  ages  to  come  his  unassail- 
able and  sovereign  station/'  Like  all  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  and  like  so  much  of  Tennyson,  the 
Elegy  is  "  thickly  studded  with  phrases  that  have 
become  part  and  parcel  of  colloquial  speech/' 
In  the  eyes  of  scholars  its  classical  phrases  and 
forms  add  to  its  charm,  for  just  as  no  traveller 
had  brought  so  much  learning  and  cultivation  to 
bear  on  all  that  he  saw  since  Milton,  so,  like  Milton, 

1  Gray  in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  series,  by  Edmund 
Gosse. 

F 


66  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

he  was  imbued  with  the  classics,  and  wrote  a  good 
deal  of  elegant  Latin  verse.  Indeed  his  longest 
work  is  a  Latin  poem,  and  his  Latin  Alcaics  on  the 
Grande  Chartreuse  are  famous. 

Gray  himself  considered,  and  no  doubt  rightly, 
his  Pindaric  Ode  on  The  Progress  of  Poesy  to  be  a 
better  piece  of  work  than  the  Elegy.  But 
the  latter  appeals  to  a  wider  circle  of  admirers ; 
one  can  only  wish  that  we  had  more  of  either 
kind.  As  it  is,  Gray,  who  said  himself  that 
"  the  style  he  aimed  at  was  extreme  conciseness 
of  expression,  yet  pure,  perspicuous,  and  musi- 
cal/'— a  very  proper  aim  for  all  writers  of 
poetry — may  truly  be  said  to  have  reached 
his  aim,  and  the  only  thing  which  prevents  his 
name  being  placed  amongst  the  greatest  English 
poets  is  that  he  wrote  so  little,  which  is  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that,  though  a  born  poet  he  fell  upon 
an  age  of  prose.  Much  of  that  little  is  unsurpassed, 
but  that  we  should  possess  a  considerable  bulk  or 
volume  of  writing  is,  as  Matthew  Arnold  points  out, 
a  sine  qua  non,  if  we  are  going  to  place  a  poet  quite 
in  the  front  rank,  and  of  this  Gray  was  himself 
fully  aware  when  he  said,  "  After  all  I  am  but  a 
shrimp  of  an  author. " 


BURNS 

1759-1796 

BURNS  was  and  is  better  known  and  loved  by  his 
compatriots  than  any  English  poet  ever  was — and 
a  striking  instance  of  this  was  furnished  when  the 
navvies  were  digging  the  trench  from  Thirlmere 
through  the  Lake  District  for  the  Manchester 
Water  Works,  for  the  Scotchmen  on  the  works  all 
seemed  to  be  able  to  quote  Burns,  and  with  delight, 
though  they  knew  nothing  of  the  great  Lake  Poet 
Wordsworth.  But  for  all  this,  to  most  English 
people  he  is  comparatively  unknown,  and  this  is,  I 
think,  owing  to  two  causes.  One  that  it  is  gener- 
ally understood  that  he  lived  an  irregular  life,  which 
is  reflected  in  his  writing,  and  the  other  that  some 
of  his  writing  is  so  Scotch  that  it  needs  a  glossary. 
But  to  take  these  objections  in  order.  There 
is  very  much  in  his  life  which  is  of  supreme  interest ; 
indeed  to  follow  his  life  and  the  growth  of  his  genius 
is  far  more  stirring  than  to  read  the  biography  of 
any  other  poet  you  can  mention,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Keats,  and  as  for  the  Scotch,  it  is  not 
as  a  rule  at  all  hard  to  follow,  the  greater  part  being 
plain  English.  In  estimating  a  man's  place  on  the 
roll  of  poets,  as  Matthew  Arnold  insists  in  his  essay 
on  Wordsworth's  poems,  the  mere  bulk  of  his  writ- 
ing must  be  duly  considered,  and  though  Charles 

67 


68  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Wolfe  is  for  ever  to  be  remembered,  for  the  one 
solitary  poem  on  The  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore 
and  Blanco  White  for  his  great  sonnet  on  Night,  it 
requires  a  body  of  poetry  to  place  a  man  in  the  first 
rank.  Now  Burns,  besides  his  poems,  wrote  some 
300  songs,  and  many  of  them  of  such  beauty  that 
Tennyson  declared  that  they  must  make  their 
author  immortal ;  and  more  than  one  of  those  whose 
opinion  is  worth  taking  on  the  subject  have  placed 
his  songs  so  high  that  Shakespeare  alone  is  con- 
sidered to  have  surpassed  them  in  lyrical  beauty. 
If  this  is  true,  or  anything  like  the  truth,  it  is 
indeed  no  credit  to  English  lovers  of  verse  that 
they  do  not  know  the  songs  of  Burns  better  ; 
for  once  known  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
unanimous  verdict  about  their  merits. 

He  had  a  genius  for  melody,  and  taking  the 
ordinary  subjects  of  everyday  life  among  the 
Scottish  peasantry,  and  using  the  homely  peasant 
speech,  he  turned  out  song  after  song  of  the  very 
highest  quality. 

Principal  Shairp,  in  the  opening  sentence  of  his 
life  of  Burns,  says  :  "  Great  men,  great  events, 
great  epochs,  it  has  been  said,  grow  as  we  recede 
from  them  ;  and  the  rate  at  which  they  grow  in 
the  estimation  of  men  is  in  some  sort  a  measure  of 
their  greatness.  Tried  by  this  standard,  Burns 
must  be  great  indeed,  for  during  the  eighty  years 
that  have  passed  since  his  death,  men's  interest 
in  the  man  himself  and  their  estimate  of  his  genius 
have  been  steadily  increasing,  and  each  decade 
since  he  died  has  produced  at  least  two  biographies 
of  him." 

"  What/'  he  goes  on  to  ask,  "  has  caused  this 


Burns  69 

interest  in  him  and  his  verse  ?  Not  success  in  life, 
for  his  was,  in  all  but  his  poetry,  a  defeated  life, 
and  one  most  sad  to  contemplate.  Perhaps  the 
very  fact  that  so  much  failure  and  shipwreck  were 
combined  with  such  splendid  gifts  has  attracted 
to  him  a  deep  and  compassionate  interest/'  In 
this  opinion  I  think  we  must  all  agree,  especially 
as  the  gifts  are  attested  by  such  stirring,  such 
tender,  such  memorable  poetry. 

His  father  was  a  Scottish  peasant  who  raised 
himself  to  the  rank  of  tenant  farmer.  He  was  a 
truly  splendid  character ;  hard-working,  wise, 
religious,  but  irascible  often  to  his  own  hurt.  He 
gave  his  sons  an  exceptionally  good  education  and 
they  read  many  useful  books,  among  which 
those  which  Burns  set  most  store  by  were  the  lives 
of  Hannibal  and  of  Wallace  and  a  book  of  letters, 
by  distinguished  writers,  and — most  precious  of 
all — a  selection  of  English  songs.  This  was  his  con- 
stant companion  by  hedgerow  and  highway,  and 
had  much  to  do  with  forming  his  taste  in  the  line 
which  has  made  him  so  famous. 

His  first  beginnings  both  of  love  and  poetry  were 
made  in  his  fifteenth  year,  1774,  when  he  wrote 
the  song,  My  handsome  Nell  to  the  blacksmith's 
daughter,  Nelly  Kilpatrick,  who,  according  to 
Scotch  custom,  was  his  partner  in  the  harvest  field  ; 
and  henceforth  his  love  for  the  lasses  and  for 
making  songs  about  them  were  his  distinguishing 
characteristics  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

His  religious  upbringing  got  a  shake  when  he 
left  home  to  learn  mensuration  at  Kirkoswald 
School,  where  he  first  mingled  in  drunken  brawls 
and  learnt  a  freedom  of  life  and  conversation  pre- 


70  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

viously  unknown  to  him.  This  evil  was  carried 
further  when  he  went  to  the  little  seaport  of 
Irvine  to  learn  flax-dressing,  for  here  he  mixed 
with  companions  of  loose  morals,  and  he  thence- 
forward was  apt  to  give  free  rein  to  his  strong 
sensual  passions  ;  causing  him  often,  though  he 
knew  and  praised  the  better,  to  do  and  delight  in 
the  worse.  Meantime  his  genius  grew  and  we 
find  him  described  as  a  man  of  "  large  intelligence, 
noble  aspirations  and  ill-regulated  passions/' 
This  singular  admixture  caused  what  Professor 
Shairp  calls  the  contradiction  between  the  noble 
gifts  he  had  and  the  actual  life  he  lived,  which 
makes  his  career  the  painful  tragedy  that  it  was. 
For  he  had,  we  are  told,  "  a  noble  nature,  endow- 
ments of  head  and  heart  beyond  any  of  his  time, 
wide  ranging  sympathies,  intellectual  force  of  the 
strongest  man,  sensibility  as  of  the  tenderest 
woman,  a  keen  sense  of  right  and  wrong  which  he 
had  brought  from  a  pure  home,  with  a  strong 
independence  of  spirit ;  and  over  against  these 
high  gifts  a  lower  nature  fierce  and  turbulent, 
filling  him  with  wild  passions  which  were  hard  to 
restrain  and  fatal  to  indulge,  and  between  these 
two  opposing  natures  a  weak  and  irresolute  will, 
which  could  overhear  the  voice  of  conscience,  but 
had  no  strength  to  obey  it.  ...  From  earliest 
manhood  till  the  close,  flesh  and  spirit  were  waging 
within  him  interminable  war,  and  who  shall  say 
which  had  the  victory  ?  " 

With  all  this  against  hirri,  to  what  shall  we 
attribute  his  wonderful  success  as  a  song-maker, 
which  has  given  him  such  pre-eminence  among  the 
lyric  poets  of  the  world  that  for  power  and  beauty 


Burns  71 

and  simplicity  of  diction  Shakespeare  alone  excels 
him  ? 

Doubtless  he  gives  us  himself  the  right  clue 
when  he  attributes  much  to  his  home  and  his 
Tiaving  been  well  brought  up  under  his  father's 
eye,  a  father  who  took  the  most  intelligent  inter- 
est in  his  sons'  lessons  and  who  "  took  pains/' 
says  his  brother  Gilbert,  "  to  converse  with  us 
familiarly  as  if  we  had  been  men/'  Much  also  he 
attributes  to  the  awakening  of  fancy  in  him  by  the 
songs  and  tales  of  enchantment  told  to  him  con- 
stantly by  an  old  nurse.  To  this  we  must  add  the 
remarkable  selection  of  books  which  he  read  in  his 
early  days.  These  gave  him  the  food  on  which  his 
genius  expanded,  and  his  ploughing  and  field  work 
on  his  father's  farm  of  seventy  acres,  though 
hard,  was  healthy  work,  and  we  know  that  often, 
as  he  turned  the  furrow,  he  was  thinking  out  his 
verses.  Witness  those  well-known  poems  on 
The  Daisy,  The  Fieldmouse  and  The  Wounded  Hare. 

Living  thus  an  outdoor  life  in  a  beautiful 
country,  he  drew  his  inspiration  direct  from  Nature. 
It  was  William  Pitt  who,  soon  after  the  poet's 
death,  is  reported  to  have  said  at  Lord  Liverpool's 
table— 

"  I  can  think  of  no  verse  since  Shakespeare's 
that  has  so  much  the  appearance  of  coming 
sweetly  from  Nature." 

But  beyond  all  these  predisposing  conditions, 
there  was  the  Divine  fire  within  him.  At  all  times 
he  seemed  to  write  from  inspiration ;  and  sometimes 
his  subject  dominated  him  as  if  it  were  some 
irresistible  spirit. 

I  think  nothing  confirms  this  better  than  the 


72  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

plain  account  his  wife  gives  of  the  way  in  which 
his  most  celebrated  poem,  Tarn  0'  Shunter,  was 
composed  in  1790.  It  was  the  work  of  one  day. 
He  had  spent  most  of  the  time  by  the  river  side, 
for  he  generally  composed  out  of  doors,  and  in  the 
afternoon  Mrs.  Burns  joined  him  with  the  chil- 
dren. But  seeing  that  he  was  busy  "  crooning  to 
himselV  she  loitered  with  the  little  ones  among 
the  broom.  Presently  she  saw  him  wildly  gesti- 
culating, and  reciting  very  loud  the  lines  he  had 
just  made. 

"  I  wish  ye  had  seen  him/'  she  said  ;  "he  was 
in  such  ecstasy  that  the  tears  were  happing  down 
his  cheeks/' 

Sir  Egerton  Brydges  records  making  a  call  on 
him  and  how  "  the  fire  sparkled  in  his  eye  and 
how  the  torrent  of  his  conversation  flowed  till 
midnight/'  "  I  don't  deny,"  he  says,  "  that  he 
said  some  absurd  things  and  many  coarse  ones.  .  .  . 
His  pride  and  perhaps  his  vanity  were  even  morbid. 
His  great  beauty  was  his  manly  strength,  and  his 
energy  and  elevation  of  thought  and  feeling.  He 
had  always  a  full  mind,  and  all  flowed  from  a  gen- 
uine spring.  I  never  conversed  with  a  man  who 
appeared  to  be  more  warmly  impressed  with  the 
beauties  of  Nature  ;  and  visions  of  female  beauty 
and  tenderness  seemed  to  transport  him.  He  did 
not  merely  appear  to  be  a  poet  at  casual  intervals, 
but  at  every  moment  a  poetical  enthusiasm  seemed 
to  beat  in  his  veins/' 

He  was  renowned  both  in  taverns  and  drawing- 
rooms  for  his  great  powers  of  conversation,  which 
led,  as  in  the  case  of  a  later  poet,  Hartley  Coleridge, 
to  his  company  being  eagerly  sought  at  all  convivial 


Burns  73 

meetings,  and  tended,  such  was  the  fashion  of  the 
times,  to  over-deep  drinking  and  much  heart-broken 
but  ineffectual  repentance.  For  he  was  by  no 
means  an  irreligious  man,  was  a  most  affectionate 
husband  and  took  great  pains  to  bring  up  his  son 
well ;  but  his  passions  were  too  strong  for  his  will 
and  he  played  himself  false,  in  spite  of  all  his  know- 
ledge and  high  principles,  so  that  he  is  a  life-long 
instance  of  absolute  and  fatal  inconsistency. 

So  much  for  the  Poet ;  now  to  say  something  of 
what  he  did  for  Scotland.  One  of  the  great  merits  of 
his  verse  is  that  it  is  so  direct  and  truthful.  He  is  direct 
even  to  coarseness  at  times,  but  always  absolutely 
truthful  in  all  that  he  depicts.  And  another  great 
merit  is  that  he  is  simple  and  clear.  To  this  must  be 
added  what  many  may  not  quite  understand  the 
full  value  of  at  first,  viz.  that  he  wrote  in  the  lan- 
guage of  those  among  whom  he  lived.  At  times  he 
gave  way  to  the  growing  desire  which  animated 
most  people  of  education  just  then  in  Scotland  to 
write  in  pure  English,  and  he  has  written  some  few 
good  poems  in  English.  The  Lament  of  Mary  Queen 
of  Scots  is  one  of  these,  beginning — 

Now  Nature  hangs  her  mantle  green, 

and  another,  the  Lament  for  James  Earl  of  Glen- 
cairn,  is  of  the  same  kind.  It  begins — 

The  wind  blew  hollow  frae  the  hills, 
and  concludes  with  the  beautiful  stanza — 

The  Bridegroom  may  forget  the  bride 
Was  made  his  wedded  wife  yestreen  ; 

The  Monarch  may  forget  the  crown 
That  on  his  head  an  hour  has  been  ; 


74  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

The  Mother  may  forget  the  child 

That  smiles  sae  sweetly  on  her  knee ; 

But  I'll  remember  thee,  Glencairn, 
And  a'  that  thou  hast  done  for  me. 

These  are  not  entirely  free  from  Scotch  words, 
but  nearly  so,  and  they  are  both  good,  which  is 
not  always  the  case  where  he  abandons  the  Scotch. 
But  The  Wounded  Hare  is  purely  English. 

But  of  course  Burns  wrote  not  only  for  his  own 
class  and  country,  his  thoughts  and  sympathies 
are  often  for  all  mankind,  and  such  lines  as — 

O  wad  some  Power  the  giftie  gie  us 
To  see  oursels  as  ithers  see  us ; 
It  wad  frae  mony  a  blunder  free  us 
An'  foolish  notion  : 

are  spoken  to  the  universal  human  heart.  Still  it 
was  to  his  own  country  that  he  more  immediately 
addressed  himself,  and  his  two  great  gifts  to  Scot- 
land were  first  his  setting  plainly  forth  the  dignity 
of  the  Scotch  "  tongue/'  and,  secondly,  what  may 
seem  strange  to  those  who  are  accustomed  to 
object  to  Burns,  and  not  without  reason,  that  his 
verse  is  coarse,  his  elevating  the  tone  of  Scotch 
Songs  to  a  purity  which  before  had  been  sadly  lack- 
ing. "  His  stream  of  song  contains  some  sedi- 
ment," says  Professor  Shairp,  "  we  could  wish 
away,  yet  as  a  whole,  how  vividly,  clearly,  sunnily 
it  flows  ;  how  far  the  good  preponderates  over  the 
evil/' 

That  Burns  wrote  so  much  in  the  Scotch  verna- 
cular is  to  many  a  Southron  a  stumblingblock. 
But  see  what  it  meant ;  to  quote  Shairp  again, 
"  Here  was  a  man,  a  son  of  toil,  looking  out  on  the 
world  from  his  cottage,  with  the  clearest  eye,  the 


Burns  75 

most  piercing  insight  and  the  warmest  heart ; 
touching  life  at  a  hundred  points,  seeing  to  the 
core  all  the  sterling  worth,  nor  less  all  the  pretence 
and  hollowness  of  the  men  he  met,  the  humour, 
the  drollery,  the  pathos  and  the  sorrow  of  human 
existence  ;  and  expressing  what  he  saw,  not  in  the 
stock  phrases  of  books,  but  in  his  own  vernacular, 
the  language  of  his  fireside,  with  a  directness,  a 
force,  a  vitality  that  tingled  to  the  finger  tips  and 
forced  the  phrases  of  his  peasant  dialect  into 
literature  and  made  them  classical.  Large  sym- 
pathy, generous  enthusiasm,  reckless  abandon- 
ment, fierce  indignation,  melting  compassion,  rare 
flashes  of  moral  insight,  all  are  there. 

"Thus  he  interpreted  with  amazing  truthfulness 
the  lives,  thoughts,  feelings  and  manners  of  the 
Scottish  peasantry  to  whom  he  belonged  as  they 
had  never  been  interpreted  before  and  never  can 
be  again.  ...  No  wonder  they  loved  him  as 
perhaps  never  poet  was  loved  before  or  since." 

But  he  worked  not  only  on  the  peasant  mind. 

"  A  race  of  literary  men  had  sprung  up  in  Edin- 
burgh who  were  Scotchmen  in  nothing  but  their 
dwelling-place.  The  thing  they  most  dreaded  was 
to  be  convicted  of  a  Scotticism.  To  them  enter 
Burns,  who  with  the  instinct  of  genius  chose  for  his 
subject  that  Scottish  life  which  they  ignored,  and 
for  his  vehicle  that  vernacular  which  they  despised, 
and  who,  touching  the  springs  of  long  forgotten 
emotions,  brought  back  on  the  hearts  of  his  coun- 
trymen a  tide  of  patriotic  feeling  to  which  they 
had  long  been  strangers.  The  tide  which  Burns 
turned,  Scott  carried  to  full  flood  ;  and  to  those 
two  writers  it  is  due  that  Scotchmen  of  to-day  love 


76  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

and  cherish  their  country  with  a  pride  unknown 
to  their  ancestors  of  the  previous  century/' 

The  second  gift  he  made  to  his  country  of  purify- 
ing the  stream  of  song  which  already  flowed  in 
considerable  volume  was  a  gift  which  redounds 
greatly  to  his  honour.  It  was  his  plan  to  take  the 
old  tunes  and  fit  new  words  to  them.  He  wrote 
hundreds,  and  among  them  there  are  some  we 
could  wish  he  never  had  written,  but  one  who 
knows  the  subject  tells  us  that  we  who  inherit 
Scottish  song  as  he  left  it  can  hardly  imagine  how 
much  he  did  to  purify  and  elevate  these  national 
melodies.  To  see  what  he  has  done  we  have  but 
to  compare  Burns'  songs  with  the  collection  pub- 
lished in  1769,  when  he  was  a  boy  of  ten.  These  old 
Scotch  melodies  have  been  described  as  "  sweet 
and  strong  and  all  the  more  for  their  strength  and 
sweetness  they  were  a  moral  plague,  from  the 
indecent  words  to  which  many  of  them  had  long 
been  set.  How  was  the  plague  to  be  stayed  ? 
all  the  preachers  in  the  land  could  not  divorce  the 
grossness  from  the  music.  The  only  way  was  to 
put  something  better  in  its  stead  ;  this  inestimable 
something  better  Burns  gave  us,  and  as  the  songs 
thus  purified  appeal  to  all  ranks  and  ages  in  every 
clime  they  form  Burns'  most  enduring  claim  on  the 
whole  world's  gratitude."  When  we  realize  this, 
we  attach  less  value  to  the  objection  to  Burns' 
poetry  that  it  is  coarse. 

There  are  at  least  twenty  biographies  of  Burns, 
so  I  will  give  you  the  merest  outline  of  his  life  here. 

Robert  Burns  was  born  near  Ayr  on  January 
25,  1759.  It  was  in  a  poor  cottage  that  did  not 
well  keep  out  the  wintry  wind,  and  in  the  last  year 


Burns  77 

but  one  of  George  III,  as  he  tells  us  himself  in  the 
song  called  Robin — 

Our  Monarch's  hindmost  year  but  ane 
Was  five-and-twenty  days  begun, 
'Twas  then  a  blast  o'  Januar  win' 
Blew  hansel l  in  on  Robin. 

He  lived  with  his  parents  and  brothers  and 
sisters,  and  as  soon  as  he  was  old  enough  he 
worked,  as  did  his  brother  Gilbert,  on  the  farm, 
first  at  Mount  Oliphant,  then  at  Lochlea,  and  later 
at  Mossgiel,  whence  he  sometimes  signed  his  letters, 
etc.,  "  Rob  Mossgiel  "  after  the  fashion  of  the 
Highland  lairds,  and  where  in  1784  his  father  died. 
Between  1783  and  1786  he  had  written  enough  for 
a  volume,  which  was  printed  at  Kilmarnock  and 
produced  him  £20.  Things  had  gone  wrong 
with  him  ;  the  farm  had  not  paid,  and  he  was 
prevented  by  her  father  from  marrying  the 
girl  of  his  choice,  and  he  was  about  to  sail  for 
Jamaica  and  take  up  some  book-keeping  work  in  an 
office  on  the  sugar  plantations,  but  the  bringing  out 
of  a  new  edition  of  his  poems  at  Edinburgh  stayed 
him.  He  went  thither  and  was  received  with  open 
arms  by  the  best  families  and  returned  with  a  huge 
reputation  and  received  after  some  delay  the  sum 
of  £500  from  the  publisher. 

He  was  in  Edinburgh  again  next  winter,  1787, 
but  he  did  not  find  such  a  welcome  as  he  had  done 
in  1786,  which  was  greatly  his  own  fault. 

In  1788  he  took  a  farm  called  Ellisland  in  Niths- 
dale  near  Dumfries  and  married  his  old  love  Jean 
Armour.  He  did  not  get  settled  in  his  new  farm- 

1  A  '  hansel '  is  a  New  Year's  gift. 


78  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

house  till  1789,  but  for  the  next  two  years  he  lived 
there  and  wrote  some  of  his  best  songs  there  ;  then, 
as  the  farm  did  not  pay,  he  got  appointed  Excise 
officer  for  the  district ;  this  brought  him  £50  a  year 
with  provision  for  widow  and  orphans.  He  now 
had  to  ride  200  miles  a  week  on  Excise  business, 
and  the  farm  and  the  poetry  equally  suffered. 
In  1791  he  migrated  to  Dumfries,  where  he  could 
do  the  Excise  work  without  a  horse,  and  from  his  life 
here  his  character  seems  to  have  deteriorated  and 
his  health  to  have  suffered,  till  in  1796  he  was  quite 
broken  in  health  as  in  spirits.  He  went  to  Brow, 
a  little  place  near  Ruthwell,  on  the  Solway,  to 
try  what  sea  bathing  would  do,  and  it  is  there  we 
have  the  touching  little  story  of  his  visit  to  the 
Manse  at  Ruthwell,  when  the  minister's  daughter 
was  about  to  pull  down  the  blind  lest  the  sun 
might  be  too  much  for  him,  but  he  turned  on  her 
those  wonderful  large  dark  eyes  which  Sir  Walter 
Scott  when  a  lad  of  15  was  so  struck  by,  and  which 
he  says  literally  glowed  with  poetic  feeling,  and  said 
to  her,  "  Thank  you,  my  dear,  for  your  kind  atten- 
tion, but  oh,  let  him  shine  :  he  will  not  shine  long 
for  me."  A  day  or  two  later  he  returned  to  Dum- 
fries and  within  a  week,  on  July  21,  1796,  at  the 
age  of  37,  he  died,  and  "  the  news  sounded  through 
all  Scotland  like  a  knell  announcing  a  national 
bereavement." 

And  now  to  say  something  of  his  works.  Burns 
wrote  a  good  many  letters  of  which  the  long  and 
famous  letter  to  Dr.  Moore,  written  on  his  first 
visit  to  Edinburgh,  gives  a  graphic  account  of  his 
life  up  to  that  point,  and  is  the  basis  of  all  his 
biographies. 


Burns  79 

His  poetical  writings  are  divided  into  Poems, 
Epistles  and  Songs. 

Many  of  the  Epistles  are  full  of  humour  and  they 
are  mostly  very  Scotch,  one  to  Hugh  Parker, 
describing  "  Jenny  Geddes/'  his  old  brown  mare, 
shows  the  kindliness  of  his  nature  ;  and  the  Epistle 
to  a  Young  Friend  has  the  lines — 

But  Och  !  mankind  are  unco  weak, 

And  little  to  be  trusted  ; 
If  Self  the  wavering  balance  shake 

It's  rarely  right  adjusted  ; 

and  ends  with — 

Yet  ne'er  with  wits  profane  to  range 

Be  complaisance  extended  ; 
An  atheist's  laugh's  a  poor  exchange 

For  Deity  offended. 

Of  the  poems,  beside  the  immortal  Tarn  0' 
Shanter,  the  most  famous  are  Death  and  Dr. 
Hornbook,  Holy  Willies  Prayer,  Halloween,  with 
its  beautiful  description  of  the  burn — 

Whyles  owre  a  linn  the  burnie  plays, 

As  through  the  glen  it  wimpl't ; 
Whyles  round  a  rocky  scaur  it  strays  ; 

Whyles  in  a  wiel  it  dimpl't  ; 
Whyles  glitter'd  to  the  nightly  rays, 

Wi'  bickering,  dancing  dazzle  ; 
Whyles  cookit  underneath  the  braes, 

Below  the  spreading  hazel. 

The  Holy  Fair  and  The  Jolly  Beggars,  a  Cantata, 
perhaps  the  cleverest  thing  he  ever  wrote,  The 
Cottar's  Saturday  Night,  in  which  he  describes 
exactly  his  father's  home  and  mode  of  life,  The 
Twa  Dogs,  The  Brigs  of  Ayr  and  The  Vision. 
The  poem  To  a  Mouse  turned  up  and  To  a 


8o  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Mountain  Daisy  turned  down  by  his  plough  are 
known  to  all. 
The  poem  To  a  Mouse,  after  the  lines — 

Thou  saw  the  fields  laid  bare  and  waste, 
And  weary  winter  comin'  fast, 
And  cosie  here,  beneath  the  blast, 

Thou  thought  to  dwell, 
Till,  crash  !  the  cruel  coulter  past 

Out  through  thy  cell, — 

ends  pathetically  with — 

But  Mousie,  thou  art  no  thy  lane, 
In  proving  foresight  may  be  vain  : 
The  best-laid  schemes  o'  mice  and  men 

Gang  aft  a-gley. 
And  lea'e  us  nought  but  grief  and  pain 

For  promised  joy. 

Still  thou  art  blest,  compared  wi'  me  ! 
The  present  only  toucheth  thee  : 
But,  och  !  I  backward  cast  my  ee 

On  prospects  drear  ! 
And  forward,  though  I  canna  see, 

I  guess  and  fear. 

In  his  poem  Man  was  Made  to  Mourn  are  the  lines — 

And  Man,  whose  heaven-erected  face 

The  smiles  of  love  adorn, 
Man's  inhumanity  to  man 

Makes  countless  thousands  mourn  I 

a   sentiment   re-echoed,   you   will   remember,   in 
Wordsworth's  lines — 

Have  I  not  reason  to  lament 
What  Man  has  made  of  Man  ? 

In  the  same  way,  take  Coleridge's  lines  in  The 
Ancient  Mariner — 

Farewell,  farewell !  but  this  I  tell 

To  thee  thou  wedding  guest ! 
He  prayeth  well  that  loveth  well 

Both  man  and  bird  and  beast. 


Burns  81 

He  prayeth  best  who  loveth  best 
All  things  both  great  and  small ; 

For  the  dear  God  who  loveth  us 
He  made  and  loveth  all. 

This  is  but  an  illustration  of  what  Burns  wrote 
twelve  years  before,  at  the  conclusion  of  his  poem 
A  Winter  Night. 

But  deep  this  truth  impressed  my  mind — 

Through  all  his  works  abroad, 
The  heart  benevolent  and  kind 

The  most  resembles  God. 

The  Lament  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  on  the 
approach  of  Spring  has  this  beautiful  concluding 
stanza — 

Oh  soon  to  me  may  summer  suns 

Nae  mair  light  up  the  morn  ! 
Nae  mair  to  me  the  autumn  winds 

Wave  o'er  the  yellow  corn  ! 
And  in  the  narrow  house  of  death 

Let  winter  round  me  rave ; 
And  the  next  flowers  that  deck  the  spring 

Bloom  on  my  peaceful  grave  ! 

The  grand  lines  at  the  end  of  The  Lament  for 
James  Earl  of  Glencairny  "  The  bridegroom  may 
forget  the  bride/*  etc.,  have  been  already  quoted 
(p.  73)  as  also  have  the  famous  lines  from  the  poem 
To  a  Louse  which,  though  not  apparently  a  very 
promising  subject,  enshrines  one  of  his  best  known 
stanzas — 

Oh  wad  some  Power  the  giftie  gie  us 
To  see  oursels  as  ithers  see  us  ! 

The  Address  to  the  Unco  guid,  a  protest  against 
judging  our  neighbours,  begins — 

G 


82  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

O  ye  who  are  sae  guid  yoursel, 

Sae  pious  and  sae  holy, 
Ye've  nought  to  do  but  mark  and  tell 

Your  neighbour's  fauts  and  folly  ! 
*  *  * 

Think,  when  your  castigated  pulse 

Gies  now  and  then  a  wallop, 
What  ragings  must  his  veins  convulse, 

That  still  eternal  gallop. 

The  concluding  stanzas  of  this  poem  are  of  Burns' 
very  best — 

Then  gently  scan  your  brother  man, 

Still  gentler  sister  woman  ; 
Though  they  have  gone  a  kennin'  wrang, 

To  step  aside  is  human  : 
One  point  must  still  be  greatly  dark, 

The  moving  why  they  do  it : 
And  just  as  lamely  can  ye  mark 

How  far  perhaps  they  rue  it. 
Who  made  the  heart,  'tis  He  alone 

Decidedly  can  try  us ; 
He  knows  each  chord — its  various  tone 

Each  spring — its  various  bias  : 
Then  at  the  balance  let's  be  mute, 

We  never  can  adjust  it ; 
What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 

But  know  not  what's  resisted. 

We  conclude  our  notice  of  the  Poems  with  A 
Bard's  Epitaph,  Burns'  epitaph  for  himself,  which 
Wordsworth  called  "  a  sincere  and  solemn  avowal  " 
.  .  .  "  A  confession  at  once  devout,  poetical  and 
human."  We  must  read  the  whole  of  this.  It 
is  written  in  his  favourite  metre  of  8  and  4. 

Is  there  a  whim-inspired  fool, 

Owre  just  for  thought,  owre  hot  for  rule, 

Owre  blate  *•  to  seek,  owre  proud  to  snool 2 

Let  him  draw  near  : 
And  owre  this  grassy  heap  sing  dool,8 

And  drap  a  tear. 

1  Bashful.         a  Be  obsequious.  3  Lamentation. 


Burns  83 

Is  there  a  bard  of  rustic  song, 

Who,  noteless,  steals  the  crowds  among, 

That  weekly  this  area  throng  ? 

Oh  pass  not  by  ! 
But,  with  a  frater-feeling  strong, 

Here  heave  a  sigh. 

Is  there  a  man  whose  judgment  clear 
Can  others  teach  the  course  to  steer, 
Yet  runs  himself  life's  mad  career 

Wild  as  the  wave  ? 
Here  pause — and,  through  the  starting  tear 

Survey  this  grave. 

The  poor  inhabitant  below 

Was  quick  to  learn,  and  wise  to  know, 

And  keenly  felt  the  friendly  glow, 

And  softer  flame  ; 
But  thoughtless  follies  laid  him  low, 

And  stained  his  name  ! 

Reader,  attend — whether  thy  soul 
Soars  fancy's  flights  beyond  the  pole, 
Or  darkling  grubs  this  earthly  hole, 

In  low  pursuit ; 
Know,  prudent  cautious  self-control 

Is  wisdom's  root. 

There  is  something  pathetic  about  these  two  poems, 
in  which  we  see  his  own  life's  experience,  and  seem 
to  catch  the  genuine  outpourings  of  a  broken 
and  a  contrite  heart. 

It  is  worth  noting  that,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Laments  for  Glencairn  and  of  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots  and  Tarn  0'  Shanter,  which  were  later,  and 
The  Death  and  Dying  Words  of  poor  Maillie,  his 
pet  sheep,  which  was  earlier — a  poem  full  of  gentle 
humour  composed  one  afternoon  as  he  followed  the 
plough — all  that  we  have  picked  out  for  quotation 
or  reference  were  composed  in  the  two  years  1785 
and  1786  at  Mossgiel.  He  turned  out  on  an 
average  five  poems  a  week  in  those  wonderful 


84  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

years  when  he  was  27  and  28  years  old.  Most 
of  his  Songs  were  written  after  this  time  and  in  the 
last  decade  of  his  life. 

They  were  nearly  all  written  for  the  volumes  of 
The  Musical  Museum,  brought  out  by  Johnson, 
an  Edinburgh  engraver,  or  later  for  a  Collection 
of  Scottish  Melodies  published  by  Thomson  of 
Edinburgh.  To  these  Collections  Burns  contri- 
buted over  300  songs  and  refused  to  take  any 
payment. 

They  are  of  four  kinds,  Domestic,  Bacchanalian, 
War,  or  Love  Songs,  the  latter  far  the  most  numer- 
ous. 

For  the  DOMESTIC  a  fine  example  is  that  which 
begins — 

7s  there  for  honest  poverty, 

Tune  :  For  a'  that  and  a'  that — 

a  poem  breathing  the  most  manly  independence. 
Perhaps  the  most  familiar  specimen  is  John 
Anderson  my  Jo.  Another  Contented  wi1  little,  and 
cantie  wi'  mair  is  noteworthy  as  being  a  personal 
sketch  of  the  poet.  For  Burns,  writing  to  thank 
Thomson  for  a  picture  of  The  Cottar's  Saturday 
Night  says  :  "  I  have  some  thoughts  of  suggesting 
to  you  to  prefix  a  vignette  of  me  to  my  song 
'  Contented  wi'  little  and  cantie  wi'  mair  '  in  order 
that  the  portrait  of  my  face  and  the  picture  of 
my  mind  may  go  down  the  stream  of  time  together." 
For  BACCHANALIAN  SONGS  we  may  take—- 
Oh, Willie  brew'd  a  peck  o'  maut. 

The  famous  John  Barley  corn  is  one  of  his  improve- 
ments on  an  old  English  song. 


Burns  85 

Of  WAR  SONGS  the  first  of  all  is  the  noble  patriotic 
song- 
Scots  \vha  hae  wi'  Wallace  bled, 

Bruce's  address  to  his  Army  at  Bannockburn. 
This  rings  with  the  trumpet  notes  of  liberty  and 
was  in  Carlyle's  opinion  the  best   war   ode  ever 
penned. 

Another  good  patriotic  song  is  The  Dumfries 
Volunteers,  written  on  the  formation  of  the  Corps 
in  1795.  It  begins — 

Does  haughty  Gaul  invasion  threat  ? 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  marching  song 
with  a  more  lively  beat  in  it  than  Ye  Jacobites  by 
name,  and  Macpherson's  Farewell  is  a  fine  song  of 
the  sword.  It  is  founded  on  a  song  made  by  Mac- 
pherson  himself  when  in  prison  and  played  by  him 
on  his  violin  at  the  gallows  hill  of  Banff  just  before 
his  execution  in  1700.  Burns  was  moved  to  write 
this  by  being  shown  the  huge  sword  of  the  gigantic 
freebooter  in  Duff  Castle. 

In  all  these  subjects  Burns  made  his  mark,  but 
in  none  is  he  so  absolutely  pre-eminent  as  in  his 
LOVE  SONGS.  Burns  addressed,  and  in  his  verse 
made  ardent  love  to,  every  lass  he  saw,  and  there  is 
no  mistaking  the  ardour  of  his  address.  It  made 
no  difference  whether  it  was  a  farm  servant  or  the 
sister  of  his  host  in  some  baronial  hall  or  high- 
land castle.  He  clasped  them  all  equally  to  his 
bosom  and  apparently  believed  himself  sincere. 
The  feeling  may  have  been  at  times  artificial  or 
transitory,  but  the  sweetness  and  melody  of  the 
verse  is  always  real  and  imperishable.  Tennyson 


86  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

bears  tesitmony  to  this.  "  Read,"  he  said,  "  the 
exquisite  Songs  of  Burns,  each  as  perfect  as  a  berry 
and  radiant  as  a  dewdrop.  There  never  was  an 
immortal  poet  if  he  be  not  one." 

The  songs  are  nearly  all  Scotch,  and  all  beauti- 
fully musical,  and  all  set  to  the  old  well-known 
tunes. 

The  song  To  Mary  in  Heaven,  is  notable  as  being 
the  only  good  Song  in  English,  and  it  went  to  the 
tune  of  "  The  Death  of  Captain  Cook."  The  story 
of  Mary  Campbell  is  this.  She  belonged  to  the 
neighbourhood  of  Dunoon,  a  beautiful  watering- 
place  on  the  Clyde,  and  was  in  the  service  of  Colonel 
Montgomery  of  Coilsfield  when  the  poet  made  her 
acquaintance,  and  afterwards  in  that  of  Gavin 
Hamilton.  They  would  appear  to  have  been 
seriously  attached  to  each  other.  When  Jean 
Armour's  father  had  ordered  her  to  relinquish  all 
claims  on  the  poet,  his  thoughts  naturally  turned 
to  Mary  Campbell.  It  was  arranged  that  Mary 
should  give  up  her  place  with  the  view  of  making 
preparations  for  their  union  ;  but  before  she  went 
home  they  met  in  a  sequestered  spot  on  the  banks 
of  the  Ayr.  Standing  on  either  side  of  a  purling 
brook,  and  holding  a  Bible  between  them,  they 
exchanged  vows  of  eternal  fidelity.  Mary  pre- 
sented him  with  her  Bible,  the  poet  giving  his  own 
in  exchange.  This  Bible  has  been  preserved,  and 
on  a  blank  leaf,  in  the  poet's  handwriting,  is  in- 
scribed, "  And  ye  shall  not  swear  by  my  name 
falsely  :  I  am  the  Lord  "  (Lev.  xix.  12).  In  the 
second  volume,  "  Thou  shall  not  forswear  thyself, 
but  shalt  perform  unto  the  Lord  thine  oath " 
(Matt.  v.  33).  And  on  another  blank  leaf  his  name 


Burns  87 

and  mark  as  a  Royal  Arch  Mason.  The  lovers 
never  met  again,  Mary  Campbell  having  died  sud- 
denly at  Greenock  of  scarlet  fever,  caught  in  nursing 
her  brother.  Over  her  grave  a  monument  has  been 
erected  by  the  admirers  of  the  poet.  On  the  third 
anniversary  of  her  death,  Jean  Armour,  then  his 
wife,  noticed  that,  towards  the  evening,  "  he  grew 
sad  about  something,  and  went  into  the  barn-yard, 
where  he  strode  restlessly  up  and  down  for  some 
time,  although  repeatedly  asked  to  come  in.  Im- 
mediately on  entering  the  house  he  sat  down  and 
wrote  To  Mary  in  Heaven,  which  Lockhart  char- 
acterizes "  as  the  noblest  of  all  his  ballads/1 


Thou  ling'ring  star,  with  less'ning  ray, 

That  lovest  to  greet  the  early  morn, 
Again  thou  usher'st  in  the  day 

My  Mary  from  my  soul  was  torn. 
O  Mary  !  dear  departed  shade  ! 

Where  is  thy  place  of  blissful  rest  ? 
See'st  thou  thy  lover  lowly  laid  ? 

Hear'st  thou  the  groans  that  rend  his  breast  ? 

That  sacred  hour  can  I  forget, 

Can  I  forget  the  hallow'd  grove, 
Where  by  the  winding  Ayr  we  met, 

To  live  one  day  of  parting  love  ! 
Eternity  will  not  efface 

Those  records  dear  of  transports  past ; 
Thy  image  at  our  last  embrace ; 

Ah  !  little  thought  we  'twas  our  last ! 

Ayr,  gurgling,  kiss'd  his  pebbled  shore, 

O'erhung  with  wild  woods'  thick'ning  green ; 
The  fragrant  birch,  and  hawthorn  hoar, 

Twined  amorous  round  the  raptured  scene  ; 
The  flowers  sprang  wanton  to  be  prest, 

The  birds  sang  love  on  every  spray — 
Till  too,  too  soon,  the  glowing  west 

Proclaim 'd  the  speed  of  winged  day. 


88  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Still  o'er  these  scenes  my  memory  wakes, 

And  fondly  broods  with  miser  care  ! 
Time  but  the  impression  stronger  makes, 

As  streams  their  channels  deeper  wear. 
My  Mary  !  dear  departed  shade  ! 

Where  is  thy  place  of  blissful  rest  ? 
See'st  thou  thy  lover  lowly  laid  ? 

Hear'st  thou  the  groans  that  rend  his  breast  ? 

But  no  song,  whether  in  English  or  Scotch,  quite 
comes  up  to  his  lines  to  another  Mary. 

MY   BONNY  MARY. 

Tune  :  "Go  fetch  to  me  a  pint  o'  wine." 
Go  fetch  to  me  a  pint  o'  wine, 

And  fill  it  in  a  silver  tassie, 
That  I  may  drink,  before  I  go, 

A  service  to  my  bonny  lassie ; 
The  boat  rocks  at  the  pier  o'  Leith  ; 

Fu'  loud  the  wind  blaws  frae  the  ferry ; 
The  ship  rides  by  the  Berwick-law, 

And  I  maun  leave  my  bonny  Mary. 

The  trumpets  sound,  the  banners  fly, 

The  glittering  spears  are  ranked  ready ; 
The  shouts  o'  war  are  heard  afar, 

The  battle  closes  thick  and  bloody ; 
But  it's  not  the  roar  o'  sea  or  shore 

Wad  make,  me  langer  wish  to  tarry  ; 
Nor  shout  o'  war  that's  heard  afar — 

It's  leaving  thee,  my  bonny  Mary. 

For  the  last  stanza  Tennyson  had  a  great  admira- 
tion, and,  as  he  rolled  the  lines  out,  they  had  a 
ring  about  them  which  truly  stirred  the  blood. 


SONGS  SELECTED  FOR  READING. 

My  Handsome  Nell  (Nellie  Kilpatrick  or  Kirkbride  ?) 
The  blacksmith's  daughter.  His  first  partner  in 
the  harvest  field. 

Mary  M orison. — Probably  =  Ellison  Begbie,  a  far- 


Burns  89 

mer's  daughter,  to  whom  he  wrote  "  On  Cessnock 

Banks  a  Lassie  d wells. " 

"  0  Mary,  at  thy  Window  be."     His  first  great  Lyric. 
"  Green  grow  the  rashes  of"     New  words  to  an  old 

tune. 
The  Banks  of  Doon. 

"  Ye  flowery  banks  o'  bonny  Doon." 
"  Of  a'  the  airts  the  wind  can  blaw  "  (composed  during 

his  honeymoon). 

"Oh,  were  I  on  Parnassus  hill !  " 
Auld  Lang  Syne. 

"  Should  auld  acquaintance  be  forgot  "  (second 

and  third  verses  by  R.  B.). 
My  Bonny  Mary. 

"  Go,  fetch  to  me  a  pint  o'  wine  "  (first  four  lines 

from  an  old  Ballad). 
The  Winter  is  past. 

"  The  Winter  is  past  and  the  Summer's  come 

at  last." 
To  Mary  in  Heaven.     (Mary  Campbell,  called   also 

Highland  Mary.) 

"  Thou  ling'ring  star  with  less'ning  ray." 
The  Blue-eyed  Lassie. 

"  I  gaed  a  waefu'  gate  yestreen  "   (Miss  Jean 

Jeffrey). 
Tibbie  Dunbar. 

"  Oh,  wilt  thou  go  wi'  me,  sweet  Tibbie  Dunbar?" 
Tarn  Glen. 

"  My  heart  is  a-breaking,  dear  Tittie." 
It  is  na  Jean  thy  bonny  face  (  =  Jean  Armour). 

(Originally  written  in  English  by  another  hand.) 
The  Bonny  Wee  Thing.     (Miss  Davies.) 

"  Boony  wee  thing,  cannie  wee  thing." 
The  first  and  fifth  of  the  six  Songs  to  Clarinda  (Mrs. 
Maclehose). 

Ae  fond  Kiss. 

"  Ae  fond  kiss  and  then  we  sever." 


go  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

My  Nannie's  awa.     (Gone  to  join  her  ne'er-do- 
well  husband  in  Jamaica.) 

"  Now  in  her  green  mantle." 
Bonny  Lesley. 

"  Oh,    saw   ye   bonny   Lesley  ?  "    (Miss   Lesley 

Baillie). 

What  can  a  young  Lassie  do  ? 
Oh  for  ane  and  twenty  Tarn. 

"  And  oh  for,  etc." 
Oh,  Luve  will  venture  in. 
Highland  Mary. 

"  Ye  banks  and  braes  and  streams  around." 
Had  I  a  Cave.     (On  the  jilting  of  his  friend   Allan 

Cunningham.) 

Oh,  Whistle  and  I'll  come  to  you,  my  lad. 
Oh,  were  my  love  yon  lilac  fair.     (The  first  two  stanzas 

only  by  R.B.,  prefixed  to  an  old  song.) 
The  lovely  Lass  of  Inverness.     (Imitation  of  old  Ballad 

composition.) 
A    red,    red    Rose.     (An    improved    version    of    an 

old  song.) 

"  Oh,  my  hive's  like  a  red,  red  rose." 

These  last  three  seem  to  illustrate  the  three 

methods  Burns  made  use  of  in  his  treatment  of 

old  song. 
Ca  the  yowes. 

"  Ca  the  yowes  to  the  knowes."      (Improved  for 

Thomson  from  the  Museum  Version.) 
Chloris.     (Miss  Jean  Lorimer,  to  whom  he  wrote   n 

songs.) 

"  My  Chloris  mark  how  green  the  groves." 
How  long  and  dreary  is  the  night.     '(ImProvecl  Version.) 

Tune. — "  Cauld  Kail  in  Aberdeen." 
Coming  through  the  Rye. 

"  Coming   through    the    rye,    poor    body." 
Oh,  wert  thou  in  the  cauld  blast.     (This  was  addressed 


Bitrns  91 

to  Miss  Jessie  Lewars,  who  nursed  him  in  his  last 
illness.) 

Burns  wrote  the  words  to  fit  a  favourite  air  of 
hers  which  she  played  to  him.  The  words 
begin — 

The  Robin  cam  to  the  Wren's  nest 

And  keekit  in,  and  keekit  in  ; 
Oh,  weel's  me  on  your  auld  pow, 

Wad  ye  be  in,  wad  ye  be  in  ? 

The  tune  was  "  The  Lass  of  Livingstone/'  Upon 
hearing  the  air,  Burns  sat  down  and  after  a  few 
minutes'  abstraction,  produced  the  following — 

Oh,  wert  thou  in  the  cauld  blast 

On  yonder  lea,  on  yonder  lea, 
My  plaidie  to  the  angry  airt, 

I'd  shelter  thee,  I'd  shelter  thee  : 
Or  did  Misfortune's  bitter  storms 

Around  thee  blaw,  around  thee  blaw, 
Thy  bield  should  be  my  bosom, 

To  share  it  a',  to  share  it  a'. 

Or  were  I  in  the  wildest  waste, 

Sae  bleak  and  bare,  sae  bleak  and  bare, 
The  desert  were  a  paradise, 

If  thou  wert  there,  if  thou  wert  there  : 
Or  were  I  monarch  o'  the  globe 

Wi'  thee  to  reign,  wi'  thee  to  reign, 
The  brightest  jewel  in  my  crown 

Wad  be  my  queen,  wad  be  my  queen. 

The  song  has  been  charmingly  set  to  music  by  Men- 
delssohn. It  was  one  of  Burns'  last  compositions. 

Seven  years  after  his  death  Wordsworth  and  his  sister 
visited  Dumfries  and  wrote  his  poem,  "  At  the 
Grave  of  Burns."  On  the  following  day  they 
walked  by  the  banks  of  Frith  near  the  poet's 
residence  and  the  thoughts  then  and  there  sug- 
gested were  embodied  in  a  poem  many  years  later, 
in  which  we  find  the  following — 


92  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Through  busiest  street  and  loneliest  glen 

Are  felt  the  flashes  of  his  pen  ; 

He  rules  mid  Winter  snows,  and  when 

Bees  fill  their  hives 
Deep  in  the  general  heart  of  men 

His  power  survives. 


S.  T.  COLERIDGE 
1772-1834 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE,  who  was  born  October 
21, 1772,  two  and  a  half  years  after  W.  Wordsworth, 
and  died  in  1834,  a£ed  62,  was  not  only  a 
poet  but  a  philosopher,  a  writer  on  politics,  morals, 
religion  and  art,  a  critic  quite  of  the  first  order, 
and  a  most  remarkable  talker.  He  had  many  aims 
in  common  with  his  great  contemporary  W.  Words- 
worth, and  yet  "  though  the  two  were  friends,  and 
shared  together  many  mental  sympathies,  between 
the  lives  and  characters  of  the  philosophic  poet  and 
the  poetic  philosopher  there  was  more  of  contrast 
than  of  likeness.  The  one,  robust  and  whole  in 
body  as  in  mind,  resolute  in  will,  and  single  in 
purpose,  knowing  little  of  books  and  of  other  men's 
thoughts,  and  caring  less  for  them,  set  himself, 
with  his  own  unaided  resources,  to  work  out  the 
great  original  vein  of  poetry  that  was  within  him, 
and  stopped  not,  nor  turned  aside,  till  he  had  ful- 
filled his  task,  had  enriched  English  literature  with 
a  new  poetry  of  the  deepest  and  purest  ore,  and 
thereby  made  the  world  for  ever  his  debtor.  The 
other, — master  of  an  ampler  and  more  varied 
though  not  richer  field,  of  quicker  sympathies, 
less  self-sustained,  but  touching  life  and  thought 
at  more  numerous  points,  eager  to  know  all  that 

93 


94  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

other  men  had  thought  and  known,  and  working  as 
well  on  a  basis  of  wide  erudition  as  on  his  own 
internal  resources,  but  with  a  body  that  did 
him  grievous  wrong,  that,  far  from  obeying,  frus- 
trated his  better  aspirations,  and  a  will  faltering 
and  irresolute  to  follow  out  the  behests  of  his 
surpassing  intellect, — only  drove  in  a  shaft  here 
and  there  into  the  vast  mine  of  thought  that  was  in 
him,  and  died  leaving  samples  rather  of  what  he 
might  have  done,  than  any  full  and  rounded  achieve- 
ment,— yet  samples  so  rich,  so  varied,  so  suggestive, 
that  to  thousands  they  have  been  the  quickeners 
of  new  intellectual  life,  and  to  this  day  they  stand 
unequalled  by  anything  his  country  has  since 
produced.  In  one  point,  however,  the  friends  are 
alike.  They  both  turned  aside  from  professional 
aims,  devoted  themselves  to  pure  thought,  set 
themselves  to  counter-work  the  mechanical  and 
utilitarian  bias  of  their  time,  and  became  the  great 
spiritualizers  of  the  thought  of  their  countrymen, 
the  fountain-heads  from  which  has  flowed  most  of 
what  is  high  and  unworldly  and  elevating  in  the 
thinking  and  speculation  of  the  succeeding  age."  l 
Thus  in  spite  of  its  immense  promise  Coleridge's  is  a 
disappointing  life  and  the  picture  of  transcendent 
genius  united  to  irregular  impulses  and  infirmity  of 
will  is  a  mournful  one,  while  his  own  recognition 
of  his  failure  and  his  penitential  regrets  lend  a 
tragic  pathos  to  his  story  which  touches  our  common 
nature  more  closely  than  any  gifts  of  genius. 

Born  at  his  father's  Vicarage  of  Ottery  St.  Mary, 
in  Devon,  he  was  the  uncle  of  Sir  John  Taylor  Cole- 

1  Poetry  and  Philosophy,  by  Principal  Shairp. 


S.  T.  Coleridge  95 

ridge,  the  Judge  and  the  great  friend  of  Dr.  Arnold, 
whose  son  John  Duke  Coleridge  became  the  Lord 
Chief  Justice  of  England,  and  died  1894. 

In  1781,  at  the  age  of  nine,  he  was  at  the  Blue- 
coat  School,  under  Dr.  Bowyer,  together  with 
Charles  Lamb,  and  there  he  had  a  very  hard  time, 
being  both  friendless  and  ill-fed. 

On  whole  holidays,  which  to  a  boy  who  had  no 
friends  to  go  to  were  a  trial  rather  than  a  pleasure, 
he  used  to  go  for  bathing  excursions  to  the  New 
River ;  and,  swimming  across  once  in  his  clothes 
and  letting  them  dry  on  his  back,  he  laid  the  seeds 
of  those  rheumatic  pains  and  that  prolonged 
bodily  suffering  which  never  afterwards  left  him, 
and  did  so  much  to  frustrate  the  large  promise  of 
his  youth. 

Shairp  tells  us  that  in  the  lower  school  of  Christ's, 
the  time  was  spent  in  idleness  and  little  was  learnt. 
But  even  then  Coleridge  was  a  devourer  of  books 
and  this  appetite  was  fed  by  a  strange  accident, 
which,  though  often  told,  must  here  be  repeated 
once  again.  One  day  as  the  lower  schoolboy 
walked  down  the  Strand,  going  with  his  arms  as  if 
in  the  act  of  swimming,  he  touched  the  pocket  of  a 
passer-by.  "  What,  so  young  and  so  wicked  !  " 
exclaimed  the  stranger,  at  the  same  time  seizing  the 
boy  for  a  pickpocket.  "  I  am  not  a  pickpocket ; 
I  only  thought  I  was  Leander  swimming  the  Helles- 
pont/' The  capturer,  who  must  have  been  a 
man  of  some  feeling,  was  so  struck  with  the 
answer,  and  with  the  intelligence  as  well  as  sim- 
plicity of  the  boy,  that  instead  of  handing  him  over 
to  the  police,  he  subscribed  to  a  library,  that  Cole- 
ridge might  get  thence  in  future  his  fill  of  books. 


96  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

In  a  short  time  he  read  right  through  the  catalogue 
and  exhausted  the  library. 

He  was  now  advanced  in  Latin  and  Greek  and 
devoured  old-world  medical  works  and  books  on 
metaphysics.  The  first  book  of  poems  by  which 
he  was  really  attracted  was  a  volume  of  Sonnets 
and  Early  Poems  by  W.  L.  Bowles,  and  this  set  him 
writing  poetry  himself. 

At  school  Coleridge  had  befriended  a  junior  boy 
called  Evans,  who  was  afterwards  a  clerk  in  the 
India  House  with  C.  Lamb,  and  he  made  ac- 
quaintance with  Mrs.  Evans  and  her  three  daugh- 
ters and,  as  he  says,  "  Of  course  I  fell  in  love  with 
the  eldest,  Mary/1  He  was  now  sixteen,  and  for 
the  next  three  years  he  saw  a  good  deal  of  the 
Evans  family  and  wrote  to  them  all  indiscrim- 
inately from  Cambridge.  Mrs.  Evans  was  quite 
like  a  mother  or  aunt  to  him. 

Cottle  says  that  Coleridge  told  him  that  a  fit  of 
disgust  at  the  rejection  of  his  addresses  by  Mary 
Evans  made  him  run  away  from  Cambridge  ;  but 
he  still  talked  of  being  deeply  in  love  with  her  after 
he  left  Cambridge  finally  which  caused  Southey 
to  wonder  that  he  should  engage  himself  to  Sarah 
Fricker.  Even  after  this  the  sight  of  Mary  passing 
with  one  of  her  sisters  when  he  was  looking  out  of 
an  inn  window  at  Wrexham  stirred  his  heart 
deeply,  and  made  him  realize  that  he  had  been 
too  precipitate  in  his  engagement,  and  he  wrote 
at  this  time  the  poem  called  at  first  To  My  Own 
Heart  but  later  on  named  On  a  Discovery  Made  too 
Late,  and  on  December  24,  1794,  he  writes  an 
impassioned  letter  to  Mary,  ending  with  the  words 
"  May  God  infinitely  love  you  !  S.  T.  Coleridge." 


S.  T.  Coleridge  97 

When  he  first  knew  the  Evanses  he  wrote  many 
verses  to  Mary,  e.g.  A  Wish,  An  Ode  After  Ana- 
creon,  A  Lover's  Complaint,  and  Ninathoma.  Mrs. 
Bigg- Wither,  Mary's  great  niece,  possesses  a  good 
portrait  by  Sir  W.  Beechey,  P.R.A.,  of  "  Mary  "  as 
a  pretty  fresh-coloured  girl  with  a  very  pleasing 
expression.  She  married  Mr.  F.  Todd,  and  we 
hear  no  more  of  her  family,  though  Coleridge  never 
forgot  their  kindness  to  him  when  a  "  Grecian." 

In  1790  he  was  still  at  school,  though  often  ill 
for  half  of  the  term,  and  there  he  wrote  his  first 
Monody  on  the  Death  of  Chatterton,  which  he 
expanded  in  1829,  nearly  forty  years  later. 

In  1791  he  went  up  to  Jesus  College,  Cambridge, 
just  after  W.  Wordsworth  had  left  Cambridge. 
He  won  the  prize  for  a  Greek  Sapphic  Ode,  but  for 
all  that  his  scholarship  was  not  very  good. 

Before  he  had  spent  two  years  at  Cambridge 
his  debts,  aided  perhaps  by  disappointed  love, 
drove  him  to  enlist.  He  was  now  of  age  and  seeing 
a  notice  that  recruits  were  wanted  for  the  I5th  Light 
Dragoons  he  said,  "  Well,  I've  hated  all  my  life 
soldiers  and  horses,  and  the  sooner  I  cure  myself 
of  that  the  better.''  He  enlisted  as  Private  Silas 
Titus  Cumberback  (S.T.C.),  in  reference  to  which 
name  he  wrote :  "  My  habits  were  so  little 
equestrian  that  my  horse,  I  doubt  not,  was  of  that 
opinion." 

After  four  months  of  misery  his  discharge  was 
procured.  He  returned  to  Cambridge,  but  left 
without  taking  a  degree.  His  Captain  read  a 
Latin  inscription  which  he  had  written  on  the 
white  wall  of  the  cavalry  stable  at  Reading,  "  Eheu 
quam  infortunii  Miserrimum  est  fuisse  felicem," 

H 


gS  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

which  is  an  echo  of  the  old  Sophoclean  sentiment 
"  That  a  sorrow's  crown  of  sorrows  is  remembering 
happier  things/' 

In  1794  he  visited  Oxford,  and  became  ac- 
quainted with  Robert  Southey,  with  whom  he 
toured  in  Wales.  Their  friendship  was  lifelong  ; 
and  Southey — who  in  industry  and  rectitude  of 
conduct  was  as  far  above  Coleridge  as  he  was  below 
him  in  genius — was  for  many  long  years  a  sort  of 
guardian  to  him  and  a  father  to  his  family. 

The  French  Revolution,  with  its  promise  of 
Liberty  and  Equality,  regeneration  and  virtue, 
had  taken  a  firm  hold  on  Southey,  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth,  who  were  all  deeply  stirred  by  it  at 
first,  and  Coleridge  now  opened  out  to  Southey  a 
plan  for  founding  a  community  in  America  on  the 
Susquehanna,  "  where/'  according  to  Principal 
Shairp,  "  a  band  of  brothers,  cultivated  and  pure- 
minded,  were  to  have  all  things  in  common,  and 
selfishness  was  to  be  unknown.  The  common 
land  was  to  be  tilled  by  the  common  toil  of  the 
men  ;  the  wives  (for  all  were  to  be  married)  were 
to  perform  all  household  duties  ;  and  abundant 
leisure  was  to  remain  over  for  social  intercourse, 
or  to  pursue  literature,  or  in  more  pensive  moods 

Soothed  sadly  by  the  dirgeful  wind, 

Muse  on  the  sore  ills  they  had  left  behind. 

The  banks  of  the  Susquehanna  were  to  be  this 
earthly  paradise,  chosen  more  for  the  melody  of  the 
name  than  for  any  ascertained  advantages.  In- 
deed, they  hardly  seemed  to  have  known  exactly 
where  their  paradise  lay."  Southey  soon  left 
Balliol,  and  the  two  friends  went  to  Bristol,  Sou- 


S.  T.  Coleridge  99 

they's  native  town,  there  to  prepare  for  carrying 
out  the  Pantisocratic  dream.  Such  visions  have 
not  only  been  dreamed  since  then,  but  acted  on  by 
enthusiastic  youths,  and  the  result  leaves  no 
reason  to  regret  that  the  project  of  Coleridge  and 
Southey  never  got  further  than  being  a  dream. 
Want  of  money  was,  as  usual,  the  immediate  cause 
of  the  failure  ;  everything  else  had  been  provided 
for,  but  when  it  came  to  the  point  it  was  found 
that  neither  the  two  leaders,  nor  any  of  the  other 
friends  who  had  embarked  in  the  scheme,  had 
money  enough  to  pay  their  passage  to  America. 
Southey  was  the  first  to  see  how  matters  stood  and 
to  recant.  At  this  Coleridge  was  greatly  disgusted, 
and  gave  vent  to  his  disappointment  in  no  measured 
language.  The  scheme  was  abandoned  early  in 
1795,  and  the  two  young  poets,  having  been  for 
some  time  in  love  with  two  sisters  of  a  Bristol  family 
were  married,  Coleridge  in  October  of  that  year  to 
Sarah  Flicker,  and  Southey  six  weeks  later  to  her 
sister  Edith,  and  both  lived  for  a  time  at  Bristol. 
Coleridge's  next  enterprise  was  the  publication 
of  a  weekly  miscellany  called  The  Watchman,  in 
the  Spring  of  1796.  The  contents  were  to  range 
over  nearly  the  same  subjects  as  those  now  dis- 
cussed in  the  best  weeklies,  and  the  aim  was  to  be, 
as  announced  in  the  motto,  "  that  all  may  know 
the  truth,  and  that  the  truth  may  make  us  free." 
But  powerful  as  he  would  have  been  as  a  contributor 
Coleridge  was  not  the  man  to  conduct  such  an 
undertaking,  least  of  all  to  do  so  single-handed. 
The  most  notable  thing  about  The  Watchman  was 
the  tour  he  made  through  the  midland  county 
towns  with  a  flaming  prospectus,  "  Knowledge  is 


TOO  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

power/'  to  try  the  political  atmosphere.  It  was 
during  this  tour  that  Coleridge  encountered  at 
Birmingham  the  Calvinist  tallow-chandler,  whom 
he  describes  with  hair  like  candle-wicks,  and  face 
pinguinitescent,  for  it  was  a  melting  day  with  him. 
We  are  told  that  after  Coleridge  had  harangued 
the  man  of  dips  for  half  an  hour,  and  run  through 
every  note  in  the  whole  gamut  of  eloquence,  now 
reasoning,  now  declaiming,  now  indignant,  now 
pathetic,  on  the  state  of  the  world  as  it  is,  compared 
with  what  it  should  be  ;  at  the  first  pause  in  the 
harangue  the  tallow-chandler  interposed  : — "  And 
\vhat  might  the  cost  be  ?  "  "  Only  four  pence — 
only  four  pence,  sir,  each  number/'  "  That  comes 
to  a  deal  of  money  at  the  end  of  a  year  ;  and  how 
much  did  you  say  there  was  to  be  for  the  money  ?  " 
"  Thirty-two  pages,  sir !  large  octavo,  closely 
printed/'  '  Thirty  and  two  pages  ?  Bless  me  ! 
Except  what  I  does  in  a  family  way  on  the 
Sabbath,  that's  more  than  I  ever  reads,  sir,  all  the 
year  round.  I  am  as  great  a  one  as  any  man  in 
Brummagem,  sir  !  for  liberty  and  truth,  and  all 
that  sort  of  things,  but  as  to  this  (no  offence,  I 
hope,  sir)  I  must  beg  to  be  excused." 

In  the  same  year  his  son  Hartley  was  born, 
and  named  after  the  philosopher  whom  Coleridge 
then  regarded  as  the  wisest  of  mankind.  In  ad- 
dition to  his  journalism  he  also  preached  in  Unita- 
rian chapels  on  political  subjects,  and  sometimes 
with  success,  his  first  two  sermons  being  on  the 
Corn  Laws  and  the  Hairpowder  Tax  ;  but  two 
years  later  the  two  brothers  Wedgwood  endowed 
him  with  £150  a  year  which  the  survivor  most 
handsomely  continued  to  pay  when  one  of  the 


S.  T.  Cvkridge  toj 

brothers  died,  on  condition  that  he  should  forsake 
the  pulpit  and  take  to  literature.  He  had  been 
writing  poetry  for  some  time,  and  in  1797  his  friend 
Cottle  of  Bristol  gave  him  30  guineas  for  the  copy- 
right and  published  his  first  volume  entitled 
Poems  on  Various  Subjects  by  S.  T.  Coleridge,  late 
of  Jesus  Coll.  Cambridge.  Eloquence  and  en- 
thusiasm came  to  him  naturally  but  all  his  views 
were  still  in  process  of  formation,  so  that  in  his  Ode 
on  the  Departing  Year  he  prophesies  the  destruc- 
tion of  England  of  whom  he  says:  "  the  Nations 
curse  thee,"  but  in  the  second  edition  of  his  poems 
which  came  out  in  the  following  year  he  changes  the 
line — 

O  doomed  to  fall,  enslaved  and  vile, 
to 

Not  yet  enslaved  not  wholly  vile, 
O  Albion  !     O  my  mother  isle  ! 

The  poem  appeared  originally  in  a  newspaper,  and 
was  not  included  in  the  first  edition.  The  volume 
contains  a  very  fine  poem  called  Religious  Musings, 
of  which  Charles  Lamb,  who  contributed  two 
sonnets  to  the  volume,  writes — 

"  I  am  reading  your  Religious  Musings  this  day, 
and  I  sincerely  think  it  the  noblest  poem  in  the 
language  next  after  Paradise  Lost.  The  author 
calls  it  a  desultory  poem  written  on  the  Christmas 
Eve  of  1794,  and  it  begins  thus — 

This  is  the  time,  when  most  divine  to  hear, 

The  voice  of  adoration  rouses  me, 

As  with  a  cherub's  trump  :  and  high  upborne, 

Yea,  mingling  with  the  choir,  I  seem  to  view 

The  vision  of  the  heavenly  multitude, 

Who  hymned  the  song  of  peace  o'er  Bethlehem's  lieldb  1 


102  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Yet^thou  more  bright  than  all  the  angel-blaze, 

That  harbingered  thy  birth,  Thou  man  of  woes  ! 

Despised  Galilaean  !     For  the  great 

Invisible  (by  symbols  only  seen) 

With  a  peculiar  and  surpassing  light 

Shines  from  the  visage  of  the  oppressed  good  man, 

When  heedless  of  himself  the  scourged  saint 

Mourns  for  the  oppressor.     Fair  the  vernal  mead, 

Fair  the  high  grove,  the  sea,  the  sun,  the  stars  ; 

True  impress  each  of  their  creating  Sire  ! 

Yet  nor  high  grove,  nor  many-colour'd  mead, 

Nor  the  green  ocean  with  his  thousand  isles, 

Nor  the  starred  azure,  nor  the  sovran  sun, 

E'er  with  such  majesty  of  portraiture 

Imaged  the  supreme  beauty  uncreate, 

As  Thou,  meek  Saviour  !  at  the  fearful  hour 

When  thy  insulted  anguish  winged  the  prayer 

Harped  by  archangels,  when  they  sing  of  mercy  ! 

Which  when  the  Almighty  heard  from  forth  his  throne 

Diviner  light  filled  heaven  with  ecstasy  ! 

Heaven's  hymnings  paused  :   and  hell  her  yawning  mouth 

Closed  a  brief  moment. 


Later  occur  a  dozen  lines  beginning  "  There  is  one 
mind/'  of  which  Lamb  said,  "  these  lines  are  with- 
out a  rival  in  the  whole  compass  of  my  poetic 
reading." 

He  had  another  good  friend,  Mr.  Poole  of  Nether 
Stowey,  on  the  Quantock  Hills,  who  helped  him 
in  every  way,  and  placed  a  cottage  at  his  disposal 
to  which  he  went  accompanied  by  Charles  Lloyd 
who,  together  with  Lamb,  contributed  to  the 
second  edition  of  the  Poems  on  Various  Subjects. 
Here  he  spent  the  two  great  years  of  his  life,  rich 
in  production,  and  during  which  almost  all  his 
good  poetic  work  was  done.  These  years  were 
1797  and  1798,  when  he  was  25  and  26. 

William  Wordsworth  and  his  sister  Dorothy 
were  then  at  Racedown,  in  Dorset,  where  Coleridge 
went  to  see  them,  and  the  Wordsworths  were  so 


S.  T.  Coleridge  103 

taken  with  him  that  they  came  to  Nether  Stowey 
in  Somersetshire  and  spent  a  fortnight  with  him, 
after  which  they  moved  to  Alfoxden  on  purpose  to 
be  near  him. 

"  The  occasion  of  their  making  a  joint  literary 
venture  was  curious.  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and 
his  sister  wished  to  make  a  short  walking  tour, 
for  which  five  pounds  were  needed,  but  were  not 
forthcoming.  To  supply  this  want  they  agreed  to 
make  a  joint-poem,  and  send  it  to  some  magazine 
which  would  give  the  required  sum.  Accordingly, 
one  evening  as  they  trudged  along  the  Quantock 
Hills,  they  planned  The  Ancient  Mariner,  founded 
on  a  dream  which  a  friend  of  Coleridge  had  dreamed. 
Coleridge  supplied  most  of  the  incidents,  and  almost 
all  the  lines.  Wordsworth  contributed  the  inci- 
dent of  the  shooting  of  the  albatross,  with  a  line 
here  and  there.  The  Ancient  Mariner  soon  grew, 
till  it  was  beyond  the  desired  five  pounds'  worth,  so 
they  thought  of  a  joint  volume.  Coleridge  was 
to  take  supernatural  objects,  or  romantic,  and 
invest  them  with  a  human  interest  and  resemblance 
of  truth.  Wordsworth  was  to  take  common 
every-day  incidents,  and  by  faithful  adherence  to 
nature,  with  true  but  modifying  colours  of  imagina- 
tion, was  to  shed  over  common  aspects  of  earth 
and  facts  of  life  such  a  charm  as  light  and  shade, 
sunset  and  moonlight,  shed  over  a  familiar  land- 
scape .  Wordsworth  was  so  much  more  the  indus- 
trious of  the  two,  that  he  had  completed  enough 
for  a  volume  when  Coleridge  had  only  finished  The 
Ancient  Mariner,  and  begun  Christabel  and  The 
Dark  Ladie.  Cottle  was  summoned  from  Bristol 
to  arrange  for  publication,  and  he  has  left  a  gossip- 


104  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

ing  but  amusing  account  of  his  intercourse  with  the 
two  poets  at  this  time,  and  his  visit  to  Alfoxden. 
He  agreed  to  give  Wordsworth  £30  for  the  twenty- 
two  pieces  of  his  which  made  up  the  first  volume 
of  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  while  for  '  The  Rime  of  the 
Ancient  Marinere,'  which  was  to  head  the  volume, 
he  made  a  separate  bargain  with  Coleridge.  This 
volume,  which  appeared  in  the  autumn  of  1798, 
was  the  first  which  made  Wordsworth  known  to 
the  world  as  a  poet/'  Wordsworth  has  himself 
left  an  account  of  this  in  his  prefatory  note  to  the 
poem  We  are  Seven. 

Cottle  has  also  left  an  amusing  account  of  his 
visit.  He  took  Wordsworth  in  his  gig  from  Bristol 
to  Alfoxden,  picking  up  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey. 
They  had  brought  the  viands  for  their  dinner  with 
them  in  the  gig  :  a  loaf,  a  stout  piece  of  cheese, 
and  a  bottle  of  brandy.  As  they  neared  their 
landing-place,  a  beggar,  whom  they  helped  with 
some  pence,  returned  their  kindness  by  helping 
himself  to  the  cheese  from  the  back  of  the  gig. 
Arrived  at  the  place  Coleridge  unyoked  the  horse, 
dashed  down  the  gig-shafts  with  a  jerk  that  rolled 
the  brandy-bottle  from  the  seat,  and  broke  it  to 
pieces  before  their  eyes.  Then  Cottle  set  to  unhar- 
nessing the  horse,  but  could  not  get  off  the  collar. 
Wordsworth  next  essayed  it,  with  no  better  success. 
At  last  Coleridge  came  to  the  charge,  and  worked 
away  with  such  violence  that  he  nearly  thrawed 
the  poor  horse's  head  off.  He  too  was  forced  to 
desist,  with  a  protest  that  "  the  horse's  head  must 
have  grown  since  the  collar  was  put  on."  While 
the  two  poets  and  their  publisher  were  standing 
thus  nonplussed,  the  servant-girl  happened  to  pass 


S.  r.  Coleridge  105 

through  the  stable-yard,  and  seeing  their  perplexity, 
exclaimed,  "  La,  master,  you  don't  go  about 
the  work  the  right  way ;  you  should  do  it  like 
this."  So  saying,  she  turned  the  collar  upside 
down,  and  slipped  it  off  in  a  trice.  Then  came 
the  dinner,  "  a  superb  brown  loaf,  a  dish  of  let- 
tuces, and,  instead  of  the  brandy,  a  jug  of  pure 
water." 

Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  speaks  of  this  period  thus  : 
"  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  had  then  a  lot  Divine ; 
they  lived  together  in  a  beautiful  part  of  Somerset, 
where  the  soft  orchard  and  cottage  scenery  ran 
up  into  the  slopes  of  blue  hills,  with  meadowy 
hollows  and  remote  dells  and  lucent  streams  and 
wind-entangled  woods.  They  walked  all  day, 
chanting  their  rimes  in  gay  or  moralizing  mood, 
cheering  each  other  and  cheered,  their  hopes, 
their  aspirations  and  their  joys  the  same. 
Their  minds  in  difference  chimed  together  ;  each 
awoke  the  best  in  each ;  and  both  were  rapt 
by  the  ineffable  joy  of  healthy  youth.  Then  when 
the  passion  of  shaping  imaginations  came  upon 
them,  all  the  world  of  Nature  and  her  beauty  and 
all  the  world  of  humanity  and  its  tenderness  took 
up  abode  in  their  souls  and  desired  to  be  upon  their 
lips." 

That  Summer,  under  whose  indulgent  skies, 
Upon  smooth  Quantock's  airy  ridge  we  roved 
Unchecked,  or  loitered  'mid  her  sylvan  combes, 
Thou  in  bewitching  words  with  happy  heart 
Didst  chaunt  the  vision  of  that  Ancient  Man 
The  Bright-eyed  Mariner,  and  rueful  woes 
Didst  utter  of  the  Lady  Christabel ; 
And  I  associate  with  such  labour  steeped 
In  soft  forgetfulness  the  livelong  hours. 

The  Prelude,  Book  xiv.,  "  Conclusion." 


io6  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Out  of  this  the  Lyrical  Ballads  were  born.  The 
volume  began  with  The  Ancient  Mariner,  Cole- 
ridge 's  first  great  achievement. 

In  his  later  poems,  Dejection,  etc.,  the  workings 
of  his  own  soul  supplied  him  with  materials. 
"  But  the  over  personal  kills  the  power  of  song, 
and  the  Love  of  metaphysical,  scientific,  political 
and  theological  problems  produces  no  poetry  at 
all  and  dries  up  its  source  ;  and  when  Coleridge 
knew  what  poetry  was  he  ceased  to  write  on  these 
problems." 

How  much  the  Wordsworths  thought  of  Coleridge 
is  plain  to  the  readers  of  Dorothy  Wordsworth's 
Journals.  She  speaks  of  "  putting  aside  dearest 
Coleridge's  letters,"  and  another  entry  runs  thus: 
"  Every  sight  and  sound  reminds  me  of  Coleridge, 
dear,  dear  fellow,  of  his  many  talks  to  us,  by  day 
and  night,  of  all  dear  things.  I  was  melancholy 
and  could  not  talk,  but  at  last  I  eased  my  heart 
by  weeping.  .  .  .  Oh  !  how  many,  many  reasons 
have  I  to  be  anxious  for  him/'  and  The  Prelude 
was  addressed  to  Coleridge,  or  in  Wordsworth's 
own  words,  "  To  a  dear  friend  most  distinguished 
for  his  knowledge  and  genius  and  to  whom  the 
author's  intellect  is  deeply  indebted."  He  ad- 
dresses him  at  the  end  of  nearly  every  Book,  and 
says  in  one  place  that  he  is  quite  content— 

if  them  my  honoured  friend  ! 
Who  in  these  thoughts  art  ever  at  my  side 
Support,  as  heretofore,  my  fainting  steps. 

Prelude,  Book  iii. 

And  that  passage  quoted  just  above  beginning — 

That  Summer  under  whose  indulgent  skies 
Upon  smooth  Quantock's  airy  ridge  we  roved — 


S.  T.  Coleridge  107 

ends  thus — 

When  thou  dost  to  that  summer  turn  thy  thoughts 

And  hast  before  thee  all  which  then  we  were, 

To  thee,  in  memory  of  that  happiness, 

It  will  be  known,  by  thee  at  least,  my  friend  ! 

Felt,  that  the  history  of  a  poet's  mind 

Is  labour  not  unworthy  of  regard  ; 

To  thee  the  work  shall  justify  itself. 

The  close  friendship  begun  at  Nether  Stowey 
was  continued  at  Grasmere.  One  of  the  most 
delightful  memories  of  Dove  Cottage  is  that  of  an 
evening  when  Wordsworth,  Dorothy  and  Coleridge 
together  read  Spenser's  Epithalamion  in  that  little 
upstairs  room. 

At  Nether  Stowey  Coleridge  had  visits  from 
Charles  Lamb,  whom  he  addresses  in  his  poem 
The  lime  tree  bower  my  prison  is  as  "  my  gentle- 
hearted  Charles,"  also  from  Charles  Lloyd,  John 
Thelwall,  Humphrey  Davy  and  William  Hazlitt  : 
and  it  is  an  interesting  thing  that  the  house  he 
lived  in  is  now  acquired  for  the  nation,  as  Dove 
Cottage  in  Grasmere  has  been.  It  is  at  this 
period  that  we  have  Hazlitt 's  description  of  him. 

"  He  is  the  only  person  I  ever  knew  who  an- 
swered to  my  idea  of  a  man  of  genius.  He  is  the 
only  person  from  whom  I  ever  learned  anything. 
There  is  only  one  thing  he  might  have  learned  from 
me  in  return,  but  that  he  has  not.  He  was  the  first 
poet  I  ever  knew.  His  genius  at  that  time  had 
angelic  wings,  and  fed  on  manna.  He  talked  on 
for  ever  ;  and  you  wished  him  to  talk  on  for  ever. 
His  thoughts  did  not  seem  to  come  with  labour 
and  effort ;  but  as  if  borne  on  the  gusts  of  genius, 
and  as  if  the  wings  of  imagination  lifted  him  off  his 


io8  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

feet.  His  voice  rolled  on  the  ear  like  a  pealing 
organ,  and  its  sound  alone  was  the  music  of 
thought.  His  mind  was  clothed  with  wings  ;  and, 
raised  on  them,  he  lifted  philosophy  to  heaven. 
In  his  descriptions,  you  then  saw  the  progress  of 
human  happiness  and  liberty  in  bright  and  never- 
ending  succession,  like  the  steps  of  Jacob's  ladder, 
with  airy  shapes  ascending  and  descending.  And 
shall  I  who  heard  him  then,  listen  to  him  now  ? 
Not  I !  That  spell  is  broke  ;  that  time  is  gone  for 
ever  ;  that  voice  is  heard  no  more  :  but  still  the 
recollection  comes  rushing  by,  with  thoughts  of 
long-past  years,  and  rings  in  my  ears  with  never 
dying  sound." 

With  the  money  produced  by  their  joint  book 
he  went  abroad  to  Hamburg  with  the  Wordsworths, 
and  thence  by  himself  to  Gottingen  where  he 
studied  German,  and  on  his  return  in  1800  he 
translated  Schiller's  Wallenstein  and  also  wrote  a 
good  deal  for  the  Morning  Post  and  afterwards 
for  the  Courier,  contributing  political  articles  and 
also  poems  regularly  for  about  six  months  at  the 
rate  of  two  or  three  a  week  ;  and  this  he  continued 
at  intervals  for  a  couple  of  years. 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Poole,  dated  March  1800,  he 
informs  his  friend  that  if  he  "  had  the  least  love  of 
money  "  he  could  "  make  sure  of  £2,000  a  year, 
for  that  Stuart  had  offered  him  half  shares  in  his 
two  papers,  the  Morning  Post  and  the  Courier, 
if  he  would  devote  himself  to  them  in  conjunction 
with  their  proprietor.  But  I  told  him/'  he  con- 
tinues, "  that  I  would  not  give  up  the  country 
and  the  lazy  reading  of  old  folios  for  two  thousand 
times  two  thousand  pounds — in  short,  that  beyond 


5.  T.  Coleridge  109 

£350  a  year  I  considered  money  as  a  real  evil/1 
Startlingly  liberal  as  this  offer  will  appear,  it 
seems  really  to  have  been  made.  For,  writing 
long  afterwards  to  Mr.  Nelson  Coleridge,  Mr. 
Stuart  says  :  "  Could  Coleridge  and  I  place  our- 
selves thirty  years  back,  and  he  be  so  far  a  man 
of  business  as  to  write  three  or  four  hours  a  day, 
there  is  nothing  I  would  not  pay  for  his  assistance. 
I  would  take  him  into  partnership,  and  I  would 
enable  him  to  make  a  large  fortune." 

In  1800  he  went  to  Dove  Cottage  in  Grasmere 
to  see  the  Wordsworths  and  thence  to  Keswick. 
Whilst  the  Wordsworths  occupied  Dove  Cottage, 
or  Townend  as  they  then  called  it,  Coleridge  was 
constantly  in  the  habit  of  walking  over,  coming 
by  road,  or  over  the  hills  and  dropping  on  them 
in  all  weathers  and  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night. 
Wordsworth  says — 

Full  many  a  time  upon  a  stormy  night 

His  voice  came  to  us  from  the  neighbouring  height  ; 

Oft  could  we  see  him  driving  full  in  view 

At  midday  when  the  sun  was  shining  bright. 

In  1801,  he  established  himself  in  a  home,  after- 
wards Southey's  House,  called  Greta  Hall,  close 
to  where  the  River  Greta  runs  into  Derwentwater. 
Here  his  son  Derwent  was  born,  and  here  he  wrote 
the  second  part  of  Christabel,  introducing  in 
Part  II  names  and  local  colouring  from  the  Lake 
District.  Late  in  life  he  wrote  :  "  Of  my  poetic 
work  I  would  fain  finish  Christabel  " ;  and  Mr. 
Gillman  has  given  us  the  scheme  he  had  in  his  mind 
for  its  conclusion  (see  English  Men  of  Letters,  p. 
58).  His  health  at  this  time  was  bad  and  his  pains 


no  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

were  such  that  he  had  recourse  to  the  first  closes  of 
the  drug  which  had  so  fatal  an  effect  on  all  his 
future.  "  Between  his  arrival  at  Keswick  in  the 
summer  of  1800  and  his  departure  for  Malta  in  the 
spring  of  1804  that  fatal  change  of  constitution, 
temperament  and  habits  which  governed  the 
whole  of  his  subsequent  history  had  fully  estab- 
lished itself.  Between  these  two  dates  he  was 
transformed  from  the  Coleridge  of  whom  his  young 
fellow-students  in  Germany  have  left  us  so  pleasing 
a  picture  into  the  Coleridge  whom  distressed  kins- 
men, alienated  friends,  and  a  disappointed  public 
were  to  have  before  them  for  the  remainder  of  his 
days/'  So  speaks  Mr.  Trail  in  his  English  Men  of 
Letters  volume,  and  again,  "It  is  quite  consis- 
tent with  probability,  and  only  accords  with 
Coleridge's  own  express  affirmations,  to  believe 
that  it  was  the  medicinal  efficacy  of  opium,  and  this 
quality  of  it  alone,  which  induced  him  to  resort 
to  it  again  and  again  until  his  senses  contracted 
that  well-known  and  insatiable  craving  for  the 
peculiar  excitement,  '  voluptuous '  only  to  the 
initiated,  which  opium-intoxication  creates."  But 
let  Coleridge  speak  on  this  point  for  himself. 
Writing  in  April  1826,  he  says  :— - 

"  I  wrote  a  few  stanzas  three-and-twenty  years 
ago,  soon  after  my  eyes  had  been  opened  to  the  true 
nature  of  the  habit  into  which  I  had  been  ignor- 
antly  deluded  by  the  seeming  magic  effects  of  opium 
in  the  sudden  removal  of  a  supposed  rheumatic 
affection,  attended  with  swellings  in  my  knees  and 
palpitation  of  the  heart  and  pains  all  over  me,  by 
which  I  had  been  bed-ridden  for  nearly  six  months. 
Unhappily  among  my  neighbours'  and  landlord's 


5.  T.  Coleridge  in 

books  were  a  large  number  of  medical  reviews  and 
magazines.  I  had  always  a  fondness  (a  common 
case,  but  a  most  mischievous  one  with  reading  men 
who  are  at  all  dyspeptic)  for  dabbling  in  medical 
writings  ;  and  in  one  of  these  reviews  I  met  a  case 
which  I  fancied  very  like  my  own,  in  which  a  cure 
had  been  effected  by  the  '  Kendal  Black  Drop. ' 
In  an  evil  hour  I  procured  it  :  it  worked  miracles 
—the  swellings  disappeared,  the  pains  vanished. 
I  was  all  alive,  and  all  around  me  being  as  ignorant 
as  myself,  nothing  could  exceed  my  triumph.  I 
talked  of  nothing  else,  prescribed  the  newly- 
discovered  panacea  for  all  complaints,  and  carried 
a  little  about  with  me  not  to  lose  any  opportunity 
of  administering  '  instant  relief  and  speedy  cure  ' 
to  all  complainers,  stranger  or  friend,  gentle  or 
simple.  Alas  !  it  is  with  a  bitter  smile,  a  laugh  of 
gall  and  bitterness,  that  I  recall  this  period  of  un- 
suspecting delusion,  and  how  I  first  became  aware 
of  the  Maelstrom,  the  fatal  whirlpool  to  which  I 
was  drawing,  just  when  the  current  was  beyond  my 
strength  to  stem.  The  state  of  my  mind  is  truly 
portrayed  in  the  following  effusion,1  for  God  knows  ! 
that  from  that  time  I  was  the  victim  of  pain  and 
terror,  nor  had  I  at  any  time  taken  the  flattering 
poison  as  a  stimulus  or  for  any  craving  after 
pleasurable  sensation." 

Next  to  1797,  his  most  productive  year  seems  to 
have  been  1802,  in  which  he  wrote  Dejection,  the 
Hymn  before  Sunrise  in  the  Vale  of  Chamouni — 
written  by  the  way  in  Keswick  and  not  even 
from  memory,  for  Coleridge  never  visited  Cha- 

1  I.e.,  Ode  to  Dejection,  1802,  which  came  out  in  the 
Morning  Post  on  October  4.  W.  W.'s  wedding  day. 


112  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

mounix,  but  the  poem  is  an  enlargement  of  some 
German  stanzas  by  Frederic  Brim.  The  poem  is 
overwrought,  but  it  contains  some  grand  Miltonic 
lines. 

Ye  Ice-falls  !  ye  that  from  the  mountain's  brow 
Adown  enormous  ravines  slope  amain  ; 
Torrents,  methinks,  that  heard  a  mighty  voice, 
And  stopped  at  once  amid  their  maddest  plunge  ! 
Motionless  torrents  !  silent  cataracts  ! 
Who  made  you  glorious  as  the  gates  of  heaven 
Beneath  the  keen  full  moon  ?     Who  bade  the  sun 
Clothe  you  with  rainbows  ?     Who,  with  living  flowers 
Of  loveliest  blue,  spread  garlands  at  your  feet  ? 
God  !  let  the  torrents,  like  a  shout  of  nations, 
Answer  !  and  let  the  ice-plains  echo,  God  ! 
God  !  sing  ye  meadow-streams  with  gladsome  voice  ! 
Ye  pine-groves,  with  your  soft  and  soul-like  sounds  ! 
And  they  too  have  a  voice,  yon  piles  of  snow, 
And  in  their  perilous  fall  shall  thunder,  God  ! 

Ye  living  flowers  that  skirt  the  eternal  frost ! 
Ye  wild  goats  sporting  round  the  eagle's  nest ! 
Ye  eagles,  playmates  of  the  mountain-storm  ! 
Ye  lightnings,  the  dread  arrows  of  the  clouds  ! 
Ye  signs  and  wonders  of  the  element ! 
Utter  forth  God,  and  fill  the  hills  with  praise  ! 

The  same  year  saw  The  Inscription  for  a  Fountain, 
The  Good  Great  Man,  ending  with — 

Greatness  and  goodness  are  not  means,  but  ends. 

Hath  he  not  always  treasures,  always  friends, 

The  good  great  man  ?   Three  treasures,  LOVE,  and  LIGHT, 

And  CALM  THOUGHTS,  regular  as  infant's  breath  : 

And  three  firm  friends,  more  sure  than  day  and  night, 

HIMSELF,  his  MAKER,  and  the  ANGEL  DEATH  ! 

Morning  Post,  Sept.  23,  1802. 

And  the  Answer  to  a  Child's  Question— 

Do  you  ask  what  the  birds  say  ?     The  sparrow,  the  dove, 
The  linnet  and  thrush  say,  "  I  love  and  I  love  !  " 
In  the  winter  they're  silent,  the  wind  is  so  strong  ; 
What  it  says,  I  don't  know,  but  it  sings  a  loud  song. 


S.  T.  Coleridge  113 

But  green  leaves,  and  blossoms,  and  sunny  warm  weather, 
And  singing,  and  loving,  all  come  back  together. 
"  I  love,  and  I  love,"  almost  all  the  birds  say 
From  sunrise  to  star-rise,  so  gladsome  are  they  ! 
But  the  lark  is  so  brimful  of  gladness  and  love, 
That  he  sings,  and  he  sings  ;  and  for  ever  sings  he, 
"  I  love  my  love,  and  my  love  loves  me  !  " 
"Tis  no  wonder  that  he's  full  of  joy  to  the  brim, 
When  he  loves  his  love,  and  his  love  loves  him  ! 


After  this  he  wrote  no  more  great  poetry,  but 
as  he  ceased  writing  he  became  a  prodigious  talker. 

In  1802  his  daughter  Sara  was  born,  and  he 
planned  the  Bibliotheca  Britannica,  which  was  to 
have  been  a  "  History  of  British  Literature, 
bibliographical,  biographical,  and  critical/'  in 
eight  volumes.  The  first  volume  was  to  contain 
a  "  complete  history  of  all  Welsh,  Saxon,  and 
Erse  books  that  are  not  translations,  but  the 
native  growth  of  Britain";  to  accomplish  which, 
writes  Coleridge  to  Southey,  "  I  will  with  great 
pleasure  join  you  in  learning  Welsh  and  Erse/' 
The  second  volume  was  to  contain  the  history 
of  English  poetry  and  poets,  including  "  all  prose 
truly  poetical . ' '  The  third  volume ' '  English  prose, 
considered  as  to  style,  as  to  eloquence,  as  to  general 
impressiveness  ;  a  history  of  styles  and  manners, 
their  causes,  their  birthplace  and  parentage,  their 
analysis/'  The  fourth  volume  would  take  up 
"  the  history  of  metaphysics,  theology,  medicine, 
alchemy ;  common,  canon,  and  Roman  law  from 
Alfred  to  Henry  VII."  The  fifth  would  "  carry 
on  metaphysics  and  ethics  to  the  present  day  in 
the  first  half,  and  comprise  in  the  second  half  the 
theology  of  all  the  reformers/'  In  the  sixth  and 
seventh  volumes  were  to  be  included  "  all  the 

I 


114  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

articles  you  (Southey)  can  get  on  all  the  separate 
arts  and  sciences  that  have  been  treated  of  in 
books  since  the  Reformation  ;  and  by  this  time," 
concludes  the  enthusiastic  projector,  "  the  book, 
if  it  answered  at  all,  would  have  gained  so  high 
a  reputation  that  you  need  not  fear  having  whom 
you  liked  to  write  the  different  articles — medicine, 
surgery,  chemistry,  etc.  ;  navigation,  travellers' 
voyages,  etc.,  etc."  "  There  is  certainly,"  says 
Trail,  "  a  melancholy  humour  in  the  formulation 
of  so  portentous  a  scheme  by  a  man  who  was  at 
this  moment  wandering  aimlessly  among  the 
lakes  and  mountains,  unable  to  settle  down  to  any 
definite  piece  of  literary  work,  or  even  to  throw  off 
a  fatal  habit,  which  could  not  fail,  if  persevered  in, 
to  destroy  all  power  of  steady  application  in  the 
future." 

It  was  in  this  year,  too,  that  he  met  Byron  whom 
he  thus  describes  : — "  If  you  had  seen  Lord  Byron 
you  could  scarcely  disbelieve  him.  So  beautiful 
a  countenance  I  scarcely  ever  saw ;  his  teeth  so 
many  stationary  smiles  ;  his  eyes  the  open  portals 
of  the  sun — things  of  light,  and  made  for  light ; 
and  his  forehead,  so  ample,  and  yet  so  flexible, 
passing  from  marble  smoothness  into  a  hundred 
wreaths  and  lines  and  dimples,  correspondent  to 
the  feelings  and  sentiments  he  is  uttering." 

After  a  tour  with  the  Wordsworths  in  Scotland 
he  went  abroad  in  1804,  and  did  some  Secretary 
work  at  Malta  for  Sir  Alexander  Ball,  the  Gover- 
nor. It  was  to  Malta  that  Wordsworth  sent  him 
the  MS.  of  The  Prelude.  Thence  he  went  to  Naples 
and  Rome,  and  came  back  in  1806  in  very  low 
spirits,  He  was  estranged  from  his  wife,  and 


S.  T.  Coleridge  115 

writes  that  he  has  returned  to  his  native  country, 
"  ill,  penniless,  and  worse  than  homeless. "  He 
was  now  engaged  on  a  series  of  Lectures  at  the 
Royal  Institution  on  "Taste/1  and  later  on  Poetry 
and  the  fine  arts.  People  flocked  to  hear  him,  but 
he  was  frequently  too  ill  or  too  careless  to  attend 
and  lecture. 

In  1809  he  lived  for  four  months  with  the  Words- 
worths  at  Allan  Bank,  Grasmere,  and  issued  twenty- 
seven  weekly  numbers  of  The  Friend,  the  object 
of  which  was  to  teach  men  how  to  think  on  politics, 
religion  and  morals.  It  was  something  like  The 
Spectator,  but  more  prolix  and  with  less  variety, 
and  so  it  never  became  popular.  For  the  next  four 
years  he  was  frequently  lecturing  and  in  1814  he 
tried  a  course  on  Shakespeare  and  Milton  at 
Bristol,  but  again  he  frequently  disappointed  his 
audience  and  the  reason  is  plainly  indicated  in  the 
following  sad  picture  by  his  publisher  Cottle. 

"  In  1814  S.T.C.  had  been  long,  very  long,  in  the 
habit  of  taking  from  two  quarts  of  laudanum  a 
week  to  a  pint  a  day,  and  on  one  occasion  he  had 
been  known  to  take  in  the  twenty-four  hours  a 
whole  quart  of  laudanum.  The  serious  expendi- 
ture of  money  resulting  from  this  habit  was  the 
least  evil,  though  very  great,  and  must  have 
absorbed  all  the  produce  of  his  writings  and 
lectures  and  the  liberalities  of  his  friends." 

Cottle  addressed  to  him  a  letter  of  not  very 
delicate  remonstrance  on  the  subject,  to  which 
Coleridge  replied  in  his  wontedly  humble  strain. 

We  speak  of  De  Ouincey  as  "  The  Opium  Eater," 
and  he  admits  that  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
taking  8,000  drops  (i.e.  seven  wineglasses)  of 


Ii6  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

laudanum  a  day,  which  he  reduced  to  eighty,  but 
never  gave  up  altogether  ;  but  De  Quincey  tells  us 
that  he  had  talked  with  a  surgeon  in  the  North 
who  had  supplied  Coleridge  with  laudanum  and 
who  calculated  the  quantity  which  he  consumed 
as  80,000  drops  a  day,  and  related  how  the  first 
time  Coleridge  went  to  the  house  of  the  surgeon 
he  was  not  at  home,  but  his  wife  supplied  Coleridge 
and  was  alarmed  at  seeing  him  drink  off  a  large 
wineglassful.  She  explained  to  him  what  it  was, 
and  very  soon  afterwards  saw  him  drink  off  an- 
other glassful,  and  before  he  left  the  house  he  had 
emptied  a  half  pint  bottle  in  addition.  Conscious 
of  the  evil  and  deeply  deploring  it,  in  the  spring 
of  1816  he  separated  from  his  family  and  went  to 
live  in  London  in  Dr.  Gillman's  house  at  High- 
gate,  where  he  remained  till  his  death  nineteen 
years  after,  and  here  he  certainly  broke  himself 
of  the  opium  habit,  and  also  ceased  to  be  a 
Unitarian. 

1816  was  another  active  year,  for  in  it  he  pub- 
lished his  Biographia  Literaria  or  Biographical 
Sketches  of  my  Literary  Life  and  Opinions,  with 
its  inimitable  criticisms  on  Shakespeare.  "  Its 
main  value,"  says  Trail,  "  is  to  be  found  in  the 
contents  of  seven  chapters,  from  the  fourteenth 
to  the  twentieth  ;  but  it  is  not  going  too  far  to 
say  that,  in  respect  of  these,  it  is  literally  priceless. 
No  such  analysis  of  the  principles  of  poetry — no 
such  exact  discrimination  of  what  was  sound  in 
the  modern  '  return-to-nature  '  movement  from 
what  was  false — has  ever  been  accomplished  by 
any  other  critic,  or  with  such  admirable  complete- 
ness by  this  consummate  critic  at  any  other  time." 


S.  T.  Coleridge  117 

He  also  brought  out  in  this  year  the  Sibylline 
Leaves,  a  reissue  of  his  poems  numbered  Vol.  II ; 
he  intended  Vol.  I  to  be  a  new  volume,  but  with 
characteristic  ineptitude  he  never  got  Vol. 
written.  Zapolya,  a  Christmas  tale,  was  written 
in  the  previous  year,  and  2,000  copies  of  it  were  sold 
off  in  six  weeks.  In  this  are  two  exquisite  little 
songs  — 

A  sunny  shaft  did  I  behold, 
and 

Up,  up  !  ye  dames  and  lasses  gay  ! 
To  the  meadows  trip  away. 
Tis  you  must  tend  the  flocks  this  morn, 
And  scare  the  small  birds  from  the  corn. 
Not  a  soul  at  home  may  stay  : 
For  the  shepherds  must  go 
With  lance  and  bow 
To  hunt  the  wolf  in  the  woods  to-day, 

which  seems  to  have  quite  a  Shakespearian  ring. 

In  1816  he  also  published  Kubla  Khan  and 
Christabel,  both  fragments  and  both  dating  from 
1797,  the  first  great  year  of  his  poetic  prime  at 
Nether  Stowey.  Nothing  he  has  written  is  better 
than  the  lines  from  Christabel — 

Alas  !  they  had  been  friends  in  youth  ; 
But  whispering  tongues  can  poison  truth  ; 
And  constancy  lives  in  realms  above  ; 
And  life  is  thorny  ;  and  youth  is  vain  ; 
And  to  be  wroth  with  one  we  love 
Doth  work  like  madness  in  the  brain. 
And  thus  it  chanced,  as  I  divine, 
With  Roland  and  Sir  Leoline. 
Each  spake  words  of  high  disdain 
And  insult  to  his  heart's  best  brother  : 
They  parted,  ne'er  to  meet  again  ! 
But  never  either  found  another 
To  free  the  hollow  heart  from  paining  ; 


n8  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

They  stood  aloof,  the  scars  remaining, 

Like  cliffs  which  had  been  rent  asunder  ; 

A  dreary  sea  now  flows  between. 

But  neither  heat,  nor  frost,  nor  thunder, 

Shall  wholly  do  away,  I  ween, 

The  marks  of  that  which  once  hath  been. 


In  1820,  walking  in  a  lane  near  Highgate  with 
Mr.  Green  he  met  "  a  loose,  slack,  not  well-dressed 
youth  "  (so  he  writes  in  his  Table-Talk).  "  Green 
knew  him  and  spoke  :  it  was  Keats.  He  was  intro- 
duced to  me  and  stayed  a  minute  or  so.  After 
he  had  left  us  a  little  way  he  came  back  and  said, 
'  Let  me  carry  away  the  memory,  Coleridge,  of 
having  pressed  your  hand/  '  There  is  death  in 
that  hand,'  I  said  to  Green  when  Keats  was  gone  ; 
yet  this  was,  I  believe,  before  consumption  showed 
itself  distinctly."  Keats  died  early  in  the  next 
year,  February  1821. 

In  1822  he  wrote  Youth  and  Age,  after  which  he 
did  little  more  in  verse  ;  but  nearly  all  his  prose 
writing  was  done  under  Dr.  Gillman's  roof. 

In  1828  he  took  a  tour  up  the  Rhine  with  the 
Wordsworths  and  from  that  time  till  his  death  he 
was  visited  by  all  the  literary  and  scientific  celeb- 
rities of  the  time.  We  hear  of  Wordsworth, 
Lamb,  Landor,  Julius  Hare,  F.  D.  Maurice,  Harriet 
Martineau,  Faraday,  Emerson,  Thirlwall,  etc.,  etc., 
coming  to  listen  to  him,  for  he  held  constant 
conversazioni  in  Gillman's  house  at  Highgate  in 
which  he  astonished  all  his  hearers  by  the  brilliancy 
of  his  talk.  But  he  would  not  always  talk.  There 
was  always  one  difficulty  with  him,  we  are  told,  and 
sometimes  two.  It  was  sometimes  a  great  difficulty 
to  get  him  to  begin  to  talk,  and  it  was  always  so 


S.  T.  Coleridge  119 

to  get  him  to  stop.     His  nephew  and  son-in-law 
thus  describes  his  conversation — 

"  To  pass  an  entire  day  with  Coleridge  was  a 
marvellous  change  indeed  (from  the  talk  of  daily 
life).  It  was  a  Sabbath  past  expression,  deep  and 
tranquil  and  serene.  You  came  to  a  man  who 
had  travelled  in  many  countries  and  in  critical 
times  ;  who  had  seen  and  felt  the  world  in  most  of 
its  ranks  and  in  many  of  its  vicissitudes  and  weak- 
nesses ;  one  to  whom  all  literature  and  art  were 
absolutely  subject ;  and  to  whom,  with  a  reasonable 
allowance  as  to  technical  details,  all  science  was,  in 
a  most  extraordinary  degree,  familiar.  Through- 
out a  long-drawn  summer's  day  would  this  man 
talk  to  you  in  low,  equable,  but  clear  and  musical 
tones  concerning  things  human  and  divine  ;  mar- 
shalling all  history,  harmonizing  all  experiment, 
probing  the  depths  of  your  consciousness,  and 
revealing  visions  of  glory  and  terror  to  the  imagin- 
ation ;  but  pouring  withal  such  floods  of  light  upon 
the  mind  that  you  might  for  a  season,  like  Paul, 
become  blind  in  the  very  act  of  conversion." 

Of  his  reading,  De  Quincey  says  that  Coleridge 
read  slowly  and  monotonously  and  abstractedly, 
so  that  you  could  scarcely  make  out  what  he  said 
and  you  lost  the  rhythm.  Southey  mouthed  it 
out  like  a  wolf  howling.  Wilson  (Christopher 
North)  put  on  a  conventicle  appearance  the  mo- 
ment he  began  to  read  poetry  and  a  Methodistical 
drawl  that  was  quite  distressing,  while  Words- 
worth sometimes  read  very  well. 

To  sum  up,  if  we  try  to  compare  Coleridge  with 
his  contemporaries  we  have  to  admit,  with  his  latest 
biographer,  that  inequality  of  style  may  detract 


I2O  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

from  the  pleasure  of  reading  Byron,  that  Words- 
worth is  not  always  equal  to  himself,  "  yet  though 
the  former  may  have  taken  only  rough  roads  and 
the  latter  have  led  us  through  some  desperately 
flat  and  dreary  lowlands,  to  his  favourite  bits, 
still  we  feel  that  with  them  we  have  seen  mountain 
and  valley,  wood  and  river,  glen  and  waterfall  at 
their  best.  But  Coleridge's  poetry  leaves  too  much 
the  feeling  of  a  walk  through  a  fine  country  on  a 
misty  day,  and  we  come  home  feeling  that  we  have 
not  seen  as  much  as  we  might  have  done."  So 
many  of  his  poems  are  unfinished,  and,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Ancient  Mariner,  his  work  is 
mostly  disappointing.  But  that  one  poem  is 
perfect,  unique  and  unapproachable. 

He  died  in  1834,  a£ed  62,  and  is  buried  at  High- 
gate  in  a  grave  now  in  the  crypt  of  the  School 
Chapel. 

Principal  Shairp  in  his  Studies  in  Poetry  and 
Philosophy,  ends  his  account  of  Coleridge  in  these 
words — 

"  But  the  best  thing  that  can  be  said  of  him  is, 
that  he  was  a  great  religious  philosopher.  And 
by  this  how  much  is  meant  ?  Not  a  religious 
man  and  a  philosopher  merely,  but  a  man  in 
whom  these  two  powers  met  and  interpenetrated. 
There  are  instances  enough  in  which  the  two 
stand  opposed,  mutually  denouncing  each  other  ; 
instances  too  there  are  in  which,  though  not 
opposed,  they  live  apart,  the  philosophy  unleav- 
ened by  the  religion.  How  rare  have  been  the 
examples,  at  least  in  modern  times,  in  which  the 
most  original  powers  of  intellect  and  imagination, 
the  most  ardent  search  for  truth,  and  the  largest 


5.  T.  Coleridge  121 

erudition,  have  united  with  reverence  and  simple 
Christian  faith — the  heart  of  the  child  with  the 
wisdom  of  the  sage  !  " 

As  to  the  poet's  personal  appearance  we  learn 
most,  perhaps,  from  the  account  De  Quincey  has 
left  us  of  his  first  meeting  with  Coleridge  in  1807. 

"  I  had  received  directions  for  finding  out  the 
house  where  Coleridge  was  visiting  ;  and  in  riding 
down  a  main  street  in  Bridgewater,  I  noticed  a 
gateway  corresponding  to  the  description  given 
me.  Under  this  was  standing  and  gazing  about 
him  a  man  whom  I  will  describe.  In  height  he 
might  seem  to  be  about  five  feet  eight  (he  was  in 
reality  about  an  inch  and  a  half  taller,  but  his  figure 
was  of  an  order  which  drowns  the  height)  ;  his 
person  was  tall  and  full,  and  tended  even  to  corpu- 
lence ;  his  complexion  was  fair,  though  not  what 
painters  technically  style  fair,  because  it  was 
associated  with  black  hair,  his  eyes  were  large  and 
soft  in  their  expression  (you  will  remember  that 
Wordsworth  speaks  of  him  as  '  a  noticeable  man 
with  large  grey  eyes  ') ;  and  it  was  from  the  pecu- 
liar appearance  of  haze  or  dreaminess  which  mixed 
with  their  light  that  I  recognized  my  object.  This 
was  Coleridge.  I  examined  him  stedfastly  for 
a  minute  or  more,  and  it  struck  me  that  he  saw 
neither  myself  nor  any  other  object  in  the  street. 
He  was  in  a  deep  reverie,  for  I  had  dismounted 
and  advanced  close  to  him  before  he  had  apparently 
become  conscious  of  my  presence.  The  sound  of 
my  voice,  announcing  my  name,  first  awoke  him  ; 
he  started,  and  for  a  moment  seemed  at  a  loss 
to  understand  my  purpose  or  his  own  situation. 
There  was  no  mauvaise  honte  in  his  manner,  but 


122  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

simple  perplexity  and  an  apparent  difficulty  in 
recovering  his  position  amongst  daylight  realities. 
This  little  scene  over  he  received  me  with  a  kind- 
ness of  manner  so  marked  that  it  might  be  called 
gracious.  ...  He  led  me  to  the  drawing-room, 
rang  the  bell  for  refreshments,  and  omitted  no 
point  of  a  courteous  reception  .  .  .  then,  after 
discussing  a  little  matter  of  business,  Coleridge, 
like  some  great  Orellana,  or  the  St.  Laurence,  that, 
having  been  checked  and  fretted  by  rocks  or  thwart- 
ing islands,  suddenly  recovers  its  volume  of  waters 
and  its  mighty  music,  swept  at  once,  as  if  returning 
to  his  natural  business,  into  a  continuous  strain 
of  eloquent  dissertation,  certainly  the  most  novel 
and  the  most  finely  illuminated  and  traversing  the 
most  spacious  fields  of  thought  by  transitions  the 
most  just  and  logical  that  it  was  possible  to 
conceive." 

This  meeting  made  De  Quincey  such  an  enthusi- 
astic admirer,  that  he  insisted  on  Cottle  conveying 
to  Coleridge  an  anonymous  loan  of  £300,  a  thing 
which  he  could  ill  afford  to  do.  He  also,  a  month 
previously,  had  escorted  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  her 
children  from  Nether  Stowey  to  Wordsworth's 
House  at  Grasmere,  where  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  his  other  great  poetical  idol.  The  account 
he  gives  of  this  first  visit  to  Dove  Cottage,  in  which 
he  afterwards  spent  so  many  years  himself,  is 
most  minute  and  extremely  interesting. 

A  pedigree  of  the  Coleridge  family,  from  the 
poet's  father  downwards,  is  appended 


S.  T.  Coleridge 


123 


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CHILDE  HAROLD'S  PILGRIMAGE 
BYRON 

1788-1824 

BYRON  was  born  in  1788  and  died  in  1824,  ae*« 
36,  the  sole  offspring  of  an  ill-assorted  couple. 
His  mother,  whose  fortune  was  quickly  squandered 
by  her  profligate  husband,  separated  from  him 
and  lived  with  her  son  on  £130  a  year  in  Aberdeen. 
When  he  was  10  the  boy  succeeded  to  the  title 
of  his  grand-uncle  and  they  moved  to  Newstead 
Abbey  near  Nottingham.  He  was  quick  and 
passionate  and  his  bringing  up  accentuated  all  his 
faults.  Well  born  and  ill  bred  he  was  sensitively 
alive  when  a  youth  to  the  lameness  which  debarred 
him  from  most  field  sports ;  the  one  athletic 
exercise  in  which  he  excelled  being  swimming, 
and  having  no  friends  or  connexions  of  his  own 
rank,  he  was  full  of  affectation  and  prejudices. 
Shy  but  quite  remarkable  for  the  extraordinary 
attachments  of  his  early  years,  his  nobler  and 
truer  self  which  gave  life  to  his  poetry  was  from 
childhood  overlaid  with  artificiality,  and  a  swag- 
gering tone,  which  made  it  impossible  to  love  the 
man,  spoilt  much  of  his  best  work.  He  seldom 
allowed  his  true  opinions  and  emotions  to  appear, 
but  preferred  to  masquerade  in  a  costume  of  cyni- 

124 


Byron  ;   Child e  Harold's  Pilgrimage       125 

cism  and  weak  misanthropy  which  he  could  never 
abandon,  so  that,  blended  in  his  life  and  work 
there  are  always  two  distinct  Byrons,  and  not  to  be 
disentangled,  "  for  he  cherished,"  says  Mr.  Adding- 
ton  Symonds,  "  his  inferior  self,  and  mistook  its 
weakness  and  its  falsehood  for  strength  and 
sincerity  of  insight." 

He  went  to  Harrow,  and,  at  17,  to  Cambridge  in 
1805,  in  which  year  he  published  a  volume  of  verse 
of  no  merit,  for  which  he  was  fiercely  attacked 
by  Brougham  in  the  Edinburgh.  Brougham's 
sarcasm  stung  him  into  real  poetry,  and  his  Satire, 
English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,  was  at  once 
made  much  of.  It  is  full  of  invective,  a  weapon 
he  used  all  his  life,  and  its  judgments  are  really 
worthless.  Indeed  Byron  never  attained  to  the 
possession  of  any  critical  insight,  and  his  strictures 
on  his  contemporaries  are  as  ridiculous  as  his 
elevation  of  Pope  above  the  heads  of  Milton  and 
Shakespeare. 

Leaving  Cambridge  he  went  abroad  and  re- 
turned in  1812  to  publish  the  first  two  cantos  of 
Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  a  poem  on  which  his 
general  reputation  now  chiefly  rests,  though  pro- 
bably Don  Juan  and  The  Vision  of  Judgment  are 
those  on  which  his  fame  will  ultimately  be  founded. 
At  all  events  Childe  Harold  took  the  reading  public 
by  storm,  and  Byron,  as  he  says,  "  woke  up  one 
morning  and  found  himself  famous."  The  en- 
thusiasm which  greeted  Childe  Harold's  appearance 
would  be  subject  to  some  deductions  now ;  for, 
to  quote  Mr.  Addington  Symonds  again,  "  the  poem 
is  written  in  a  declamatory  style.  The  Pilgrim 
is  a  rococo  creation  to  whom  its  author  failed  to 


126  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

communicate  the  breath  of  life,  and  when  this 
fictitious  hero  disappears  from  the  scene  the  stan- 
zas invariably  improve.  Therefore  the  third  and 
fourth  cantos,  written  in  the  plenitude  of  Byron's 
powers,  when  Childe  Harold  has  been  all  but  for- 
gotten might  pass  for  a  separate  composition.  In 
these  cantos,  with  the  person  of  the  Pilgrim  the 
affectation  of  Spenserian  language,  sparely  but 
awkwardly  employed  in  the  first  canto,  is  dropped. 
The  vein  of  meditation  is  richer,  deeper,  more 
dignified  in  utterance.  The  personal  emotion  of 
the  poet,  saddened,  and  elevated  by  his  cruel 
experience  of  life,  finds  vent  in  larger  harmonies 
and  more  impassioned  bursts  of  eloquence  ;  while 
his  enjoyment  of  Nature  in  her  grander  aspects  is 
expressed  with  solemnity  in  the  passages  upon  the 
Ocean  and  the  Jura  thunderstorm/' 

There  is  no  concealing  of  the  fact  that  Byron's 
life  was  one  of  self-indulgence  and  excess,  and  it 
was  in  an  attempt  to  escape  from  it  that  he  married 
Miss  Milbanke,  the  daughter  of  a  Durham  baronet. 
The  union  proved  singularly  unhappy  and  after 
a  year  Lady  Byron,  with  her  daughter  Ada,  left 
her  husband,  went  to  live  at  her  father's  house,  and 
refused  to  return. 

Byron  now  became  the  subject  of  general  repro- 
bation and  was  accused  of  every  vice  ;  and  though 
his  poetry  was  popular  the  Author  became  very 
much  the  reverse.  Again  he  left  England  in  1815. 
"  I  felt,"  he  writes,  "  that  if  what  was  whispered 
and  muttered  and  murmured  was  true  I  was  unfit 
for  England ;  if  false,  England  was  unfit  for  me. 
I  withdrew." 

This  exile,  though  the  life  he  led  was  lawless  as 


Byron  ;   Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage       127 

ever,  marks  a  fresh  increase  in  his  poetic  powers 
which  we  notice  at  once  in  Canto  III  of  Childe 
Harold,  written  at  Geneva  in  1816,  and  in  Canto 
IV,  written  at  Venice  in  1818.  The  poem  was  the 
outcome  of  his  wanderings  and,  like  Don  Juan,  is  a 
sort  of  diary ;  the  verse  full  of  digressions  and 
personal  feelings  and  invective,  but  with  frequent 
and  beautiful  descriptions  of  each  place  he  passed 
through  or  stayed  in. 

After  1818  the  next  four  years  were  occupied  with 
Don  Juan  and  then  with  The  Vision  of  Judgment, 
a  satire  on  a  poem  of  the  same  name  by  Southey 
whom  he  treats  to  his  fullest  flow  of  invective. 

In  1823  he  set  out  for  Greece  to  endeavour  to 
help  her  to  obtain  her  independence.  Hellas  and 
Liberty  were  inspirations  to  him,  and  he  wrote  no 
finer  lines  than  those  on  Greece  in  the  Fourth 
Canto  of  Don  Juan. 

The  Isles  of  Greece  !     The  Isles  of  Greece  ! 

Where  burning  Sappho  loved  and  sung, 
Where  grew  the  arts  of  War  and  Peace, 

Where  Delos  rose,  and  Phoebus  sprung  ! 
Eternal  Summer  gilds  them  yet, 
But  all,  except  their  sun,  is  set. 

*  *  *  * 

The  mountains  look  on  Marathon — 

And  Marathon  looks  on  the  sea  ; 
And  musing  there  an  hour  alone, 

I  dreamed  that  Greece  might  still  be  free  ; 
For  standing  on  the  Persians'  grave, 
I  could  not  deem  myself  a  slave. 

Childe  Harold  professes  to  be  a  descriptive  poem, 
but  it  is  more  truly  an  analysis  and  exhibition  of 
the  writer's  own  feelings  and  reflections,  and  the 
third  Canto  is  mainly  autobiographical.  Byron's 
nature  being  one  which  needed  pain  to  deepen  it, 


128  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

the  blows  of  fortune  always  tended  to  increase  his 
poetic  power,  and  as  he  died  at  the  early  age  of  36 
naturally  his  later  is  a  great  advance  on  his  earlier 
work,  for  whatever  he  gained  of  wisdom  and  insight 
was  not  from  reading  or  wise  companionship  but 
simply  and  solely  from  experience. 


SHELLEY 

1792-1822 

SHELLEY  was  born  at  Field  Place,  near  Horsham, 
on  August  4,  1792,  and  was  drowned  in  the  bay  of 
Spezzia,  off  Via  Reggio,  July  8,  1822,  only  a  year 
after  he  had  written  his  beautiful  lament  for  the 
death  of  his  brother  poet,  Keats,  who  died  at 
Rome,  February  23,  1821.  There  the  remains  of 
both  the  poets  now  rest  together.  The  drowning 
of  Shelley  is  commemorated  in  England  by  beauti- 
ful sculptured  memorials  both  in  the  old  Abbey 
of  Christ  Church,  Hants,  and  more  recently  in 
University  College,  Oxford,  from  which  he  was 
expelled  in  his  first  undergraduate  year  for  pub- 
lishing a  pamphlet  on  The  Necessity  of  Atheism. 

He  was  a  contemporary  of  the  Lake  poets 
Southey,  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  a  close  friend 
of  Byron,  and  knew  Keats.  How  young  they 
were,  that  remarkable  band  of  poets !  Byron 
died  at  36,  Shelley  at  30,  and  Keats  at  25. 

Shelley  was  well  born  and  heir  to  a  baronetcy. 
His  father  was  not  distinguished,  but  Sir  Bysshe 
Shelley,  his  grandfather,  was  a  man  of  ability  and 
means.  In  appearance  Shelley  was  fair,  tall  and 
slender,  with  a  small  head,  blue  eyes,  always 
noticeably  bright,  and  light  brown  hair,  his  voice 
as  a  boy  was  sweet  but  as  a  man  unmusical.  He 

129 


130  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

was  extremely  quick  at  learning  and  was  always 
reading,  his  first  choice  being  books  of  science  and 
novels,  and  later,  philosophy,  English  poetry  and 
Greek.  When  his  body  was  washed  up  on  the 
shore  of  the  Mediterranean  he  had  a  Sophocles 
in  his  left  pocket  and  a  Keats,  doubled  back  as 
if  thrust  hurriedly  away,  in  the  other.  The  father 
and  son  had  nothing  in  common  either  in  character 
or  tastes. 

After  two  years'  schooling  at  Sion  House,  Brent- 
ford, he  went  to  Eton  and  thence  to  Oxford.  At 
Eton  his  chief  delight  was  chemistry,  and  even  then 
he  got  the  nickname  of  "  The  Atheist."  He  cared 
for  no  boys'  pastimes,  but  brave,  gentle  and  gener- 
ous by  nature,  he  was  all  his  life  boyish  and  impul- 
sive and  of  unusually  strong  feelings  ;  and  a  deed 
of  injustice  or  cruelty  always  roused  in  him  the 
sharpest  indignation.  But  his  chief  characteristic 
was  that  he  was  always  opposed  to  all  conven- 
tionality, whence  he  carried  on  an  exaggerated 
warfare  all  his  life  with  the  world's  opinion,  that 
is  the  keynote  of  his  life.  Of  course,  little  good 
could  be  got  out  of  that,  for  practically  the  world 
must  be  arranged  to  suit  the  ordinary  man,  and 
poets  must,  as  Shelley  says — 

Be  cradled  into  poesy  by  wrong 
And  learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in  song. 

This  is  what  ^schylus  says  in  the  lines  from  the 
Agamemnon  which  Gray  prefixed  to  his  Hymn  to 
Adversity.  That  Zeus  taught  men  wisdom  and 
made  it  a  law  that  learning  should  come  to  mortals 
through  suffering. 

While  still   at  Eton  he  wrote  a  novel   called 


Shelley  131 

Zostrossi  and  got  £40  for  it,  as  much  as  Gray  made 
by  literature  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life.  He 
spent  it  all  on  giving  a  supper  to  his  Eton  friends. 

At  18  he  published  a  volume  with  the  title 
Original  Poetry,  by  Victor  and  Cazire,  and  ordered 
1,480  copies  to  be  printed,  though  he  had  no  money 
to  pay  for  them.  Novels  and  pamphlets,  none  of 
them  of  any  value,  chiefly  occupied  his  pen  for 
some  years. 

When  driven  from  Oxford,  his  father  forbidding 
him  to  come  home,  he  went  with  his  Oxford  friend 
Hogg  to  live  in  London,  and  when  only  19  he  met 
at  his  sister's  school  at  Clapham  (he  had  four  sis- 
ters and  one  brother)  a  Miss  Harriet  Westbrooke. 
He  was  then  still  in  love  with  his  cousin,  Harriet 
Grove,  but  this  attachment  was  prohibited  upon 
his  expulsion,  and  when  two  years  after  his  mar- 
riage he  dedicated  one  of  his  poems  (Queen  Mab) 
in  terms  of  affection  "  to  Harriet  "  it  was  not  and 
never  has  been  made  clear  to  which  he  was  refer- 
ring. This  poem,  begun  in  1810,  was  published 
in  1813,  and  did  his  reputation  nothing  but  harm 
on  account  of  its  revolutionary  opinions  on  love 
and  marriage,  and  its  shameless  atheism. 

Harriet  Westbrooke  was  16,  the  pretty  and  lady- 
like daughter  of  a  Jew  coffee-house  keeper.  Shel- 
ley heard  she  was  ill-treated  at  home  and  at  once 
became  her  champion,  on  which  she  turned  to  him 
as  her  protector,  which  flattered  him  and,  to  make 
a  long  story  short,  though  he  had  always  a  decided 
horror  of  matrimony,  he  eloped  with  her  and  they 
were  married  by  Scotch  rites  in  Edinburgh  :  and 
they  lived  on  Shelley's  allowance  of  £200  a  year 
happily  enough  until  another  "  exposition  of 


132  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

marriage  "  came  over  him,  when  he  deserted  her 
for  Mary  Godwin.  The  Lord  Chancellor  Eldon, 
subsequently  deprived  him  of  the  custody  of  his 
two  children  lanthe  and  Charles,  born  in  1813  and 
1814,  partly  on  the  grounds  of  his  desertion  of  his 
wife  and  partly  on  account  of  the  views  he  had 
expressed  in  Queen  Mob. 

The  chief  cause  of  dissatisfaction  with  his  first 
marriage  was  that  his  wife's  sister,  Eliza,  whom  he 
hated,  as  he  says,  with  all  his  heart  and  soul,  in- 
sisted on  living  with  them  and  dominating  their 
household.  Once  he  fled  to  Keswick,  but  did  not 
succeed  in  shaking  her  off  for  long.  At  Keswick 
of  all  the  Lake  poets  he  only  saw  Southey,  and 
there  began  his  poem  Queen  Mob.  He  also  first 
wrote  to  W.  Godwin  in  praise  of  his  book  about 
Political  Justice,  and  tells  him  that  he  and  his  wife 
are  off  to  Ireland  "  to  forward  as  much  as  we  can 
the  Catholic  emancipation."  "  My  wife,"  he 
adds,  "  is  the  partner  of  my  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings." He  often  wrote  to  people  he  did  not  know, 
and  thus  made  great  friends  by  letter  with  a  Miss 
Kitchener  and  insisted  on  her  coming  to  live  with 
them  in  Wales  at  Tan-yr-allt,  but  on  closer  in- 
spection his  enthusiasm  evaporated  and  she  is 
generally  referred  to  in  his  subsequent  letters  as 
"  the  Brown  Demon."  Returning  to  Town  in  1813, 
Eliza  again  joined  them  in  a  house  in  Half -Moon 
Street.  Here  Shelley  was  to  be  seen  all  day  in  a 
projecting  window  with  a  book  in  his  hand.  "  He 
wanted,"  said  one  of  his  lady  admirers,  "  only  a 
pan  of  clear  water  and  a  fresh  turf  to  look  like 
some  young  lady's  lark  hanging  outside  for  air 
and  song." 


Shelley  133 

Now  Shelley  was  no  reprobate,  he  had  the  moral 
sense  very  strongly  developed,  and  a  most  acute 
sense  of  right  and  wrong  ;  his  mind  and  his  thought 
and  language  were  quite  remarkably  pure,  his 
benevolence  and  philanthropy  and  his  hatred  of 
all  oppression  were  boundless,  but  he  was  a  sworn 
enemy  to  all  convention,  and  when  he  fell  in  with 
Mary  Wollstonecraft  Godwin,  whose  parents  held 
and  taught  their  children  the  same  ideas  as  Shelley 
himself  held  on  the  wrongfulness  of  being  bound 
by  the  conventional  ideas  of  marriage,  it  was  but 
following  out  the  principles  they  considered  right, 
when  they  agreed  to  live  and  work  together,  just 
as  they  were,  for  the  emancipation  of  mankind. 
Hence  though  for  the  sake  of  his  children  he 
had  remarried  his  wife  with  English  rites  at  St. 
George's,  Hanover  Square,  only  a  few  weeks  elapsed 
before  he  left  her  altogether  for  Mary  Godwin. 
At  first  Mary  lived  with  her  parents,  but  soon 
they  left  for  the  Continent,  crossing  in  an  open  boat 
accompanied  by  Miss  Clairmont,  Mary's  half- 
sister,  who  became  the  mother  of  Byron's  child 
Allegra. 

Shelley  and  Byron  spent  their  days  together 
and  lived  much  together  for  the  next  six  years, 
and  Byron  writes  of  Shelley :  "He  was  the  most 
gentle,  the  most  amiable,  the  least  worldly- 
minded  person  I  ever  met,  full  of  delicacy,  disin- 
terested beyond  all  other  men,  and  possessing  a 
degree  of  genius  joined  to  simplicity  as  rare  as 
it  is  admirable.  He  had  formed  to  himself  a  beau 
ideal  of  all  that  is  fine,  high-minded  and  noble,  and 
he  acted  up  to  this  ideal  even  to  the  very  letter." 
His  unconventional  ways  and  his  generosity  are 


134  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

illustrated  by  the  following  extract  from  Tre- 
lawny's  Record,  vol.  i.,  p.  120  : — 

"  After  returning  with  Shelley  from  Leghorn, 
I  put  up  my  chaise  at  the  hostelry,  and  went  in  to 
dine  with  Mrs.  Shelley.  All  fixed  rules  of  feeding 
the  poet  looked  upon  as  ridiculous  ;  he  grazed 
when  he  was  hungry,  anywhere,  at  any  time. 
Mrs.  Shelley  conformed  to  the  ways  of  the  world  in 
all  things  that  she  could. 

"  Finding  no  one  about  the  house,  I  went  into 
his  library  ;  the  poet  was  untying  the  bag  of  scudi 
that  we  brought  from  Leghorn.  Standing  up  he 
turned  out  the  bag  on  to  the  hearthrug,  and  the 
glittering  coins  bespangled  the  floor.  It  was  amus- 
ing to  see  him  scraping  them  together  with  the 
shovel  out  of  the  fireplace  ;  having  adroitly  got 
them  into  a  lump  he  pressed  them  as  flat  as  he 
could  with  his  foot,  then  skilfully  with  the  shovel 
divided  them  as  nearly  as  possible  into  two  equal 
portions  ;  one  of  the  halves  he  divided  again  into 
two  equal  portions  by  guesswork,  saying  to  Mary, 
'  That  half  will  feed  the  house  and  pay  the  rent/ 
then  pointing  to  the  smaller  portion  he  said, '  That 
will  do  for  you.  This  is  my  portion/ 

"  Then  he  spoke  lower  to  her  that  I  might  not 
hear,  but  she  told  me  that  he  said, '  I  will  give  this 
to  poor  Tom  Medwin,  who  wants  to  go  to  Naples 
and  has  no  money/ 

"  I  said  to  Mary  as  we  were  dining, '  Why,  he  has 
left  nothing  for  himself.' 

"  She  said, '  No,  if  he  wants  anything  he  tells  me 
to  get  it,  and  if  he  wants  a  scudo  to  give  any  one, 
perhaps  I  lend  it  him  (smiling),  but  he  can't  be 
trusted  with  money,  and  he  won't  have  it/  ' 


Shelley  135 

They  remained  abroad,  travelling  on  foot,  with 
their  baggage  on  a  donkey,  until  want  of  funds 
drove  them  back  to  England,  and  for  a  time  they 
lived  in  poverty  till  the  death  of  Sir  Bysshe  Shelley 
in  1815,  when  Shelley  was  allowed  £1,000  a  year, 
a  portion  of  which  was  at  once  set  aside  for  his  wife 
Harriet.  She  went  down  the  hill,  left  her  parents, 
and  took  up  with  a  man  who  soon  left  her,  and  in 
1816,  in  despair,  being  cast  off  by  husband,  lover, 
and  parents,  she  drowned  herself.  For  this  tragedy 
Shelley  was  entirely  responsible,  and  what  a  com- 
mentary on  this  it  is  to  find  that  at  the  time  he 
was  busy  with  his  autobiographical  poem  Alastor, 
which  expresses  his  devotion  to  Ideal  Beauty. 

The  Revolt  of  Islam,  called  at  first  Laon  and 
Cythna,  a  poem  in  twelve  books,  containing  some 
4,000  lines,  is  still  more  representative  of  its 
author. 

"  Shelley's  passionate  belief  in  friendship — I 
quote  from  Mr.  Addington  Symonds — his  principle 
of  the  equality  of  women  with  men,  his  demand  for 
bloodless  revolution,  his  confidence  in  eloquence 
and  reason  to  move  nations,  his  doctrine  of  free 
love,  his  vegetarianism,  his  hatred  of  religious 
intolerance  and  tyranny — are  blent  together  and 
concentrated  in  the  glowing  cantos  of  this  wonder- 
ful romance.  The  hero,  Laon,  is  himself  idealized, 
the  self  which  he  imagined  when  he  undertook  his 
Irish  campaign.  The  heroine,  Cythna,  is  the  help- 
mate he  had  always  dreamed,  the  woman  exquis- 
itely feminine,  yet  capable  of  being  fired  with  male 
enthusiasms,  and  of  grappling  the  real  problems 
of  our  nature  with  a  man's  firm  grasp.  In  the  first 
edition  of  the  poem  he  made  Laon  and  Cythna 


136  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

brother  and  sister,  not  because  he  believed  in  the 
desirability  of  incest,  but  because  he  wished  to 
throw  a  glove  down  to  society,  and  to  attack  the 
intolerance  of  custom  in  its  stronghold.  In  the 
preface,  he  tells  us  that  it  was  his  purpose  to  kindle 
in  the  bosoms  of  his  readers  '  a  virtuous  enthusiasm 
for  those  doctrines  of  liberty  and  justice,  that  faith 
and  hope  in  something  good,  which  neither  vio- 
lence, nor  misrepresentation,  nor  prejudice,  can 
ever  wholly  extinguish  among  mankind '  ;  to 
illustrate  '  the  growth  and  progress  of  individual 
mind  aspiring  after  excellence,  and  devoted  to  the 
love  of  mankind  ' ;  and  to  celebrate  Love  '  as  the 
sole  law  which  should  govern  the  moral  world/ 
The  wild  romantic  treatment  of  this  didactic  mo- 
tive makes  the  poem  highly  characteristic  of  its 
author.  It  is  written  in  Spenserian  stanzas,  with 
a  rapidity  of  movement  and  a  dazzling  brilliance 
that  are  Shelley's  own.  The  story  relates  the 
kindling  of  a  nation  to  freedom  at  the  cry  of  a 
young  poet-prophet,  the  temporary  triumph  of  the 
good  cause,  the  final  victory  of  despotic  force,  and 
the  martyrdom  of  the  hero,  together  with  whom  the 
heroine  falls  a  willing  victim.  It  is  full  of  thrilling 
incidents  and  lovely  pictures  ;  yet  the  tale  is  the 
least  part  of  the  poem ;  and  few  readers  have 
probably  been  able  either  to  sympathize  with  its 
visionary  characters,  or  to  follow  the  narrative 
without  weariness.  As  in  the  case  of  other  poems 
by  Shelley — especially  those  in  which  he  attempted 
to  tell  a  story,  for  which  kind  of  art  his  genius 
was  not  well  suited — the  central  motive  of  Laon 
and  Cythna  is  surrounded  by  so  radiant  a  photo- 
sphere of  imagery  and  eloquence  that  it  is  difficult 


Shelley  137 

to  fix  our  gaze  upon  it,  blinded  as  we  are  by  the 
excess  of  splendour.  Yet  no  one  now  can  read  the 
terrible  tenth  canto,  or  the  lovely  fifth,  without 
feeling  that  a  young  eagle  of  poetry  had  here  tried 
the  full  strength  of  his  pinions  in  their  flight.  This 
truth  was  by  no  means  recognized  when  Laon  and 
Cythna  first  appeared  before  the  public.  Hooted 
down,  derided,  stigmatized,  and  howled  at,  it 
only  served  to  intensify  the  prejudice  with  which 
the  author  of  Queen  Mab  had  come  to  be  regarded. 

"  I  have  spoken  of  this  poem  under  its  first  name 
of  Laon  and  Cythna.  A  certain  number  of  copies 
were  issued  with  this  title ;  but  the  publisher, 
Oilier,  not  without  reason,  dreaded  the  effect  the 
book  would  make  ;  he  therefore  induced  Shelley 
to  alter  the  relationship  between  the  hero  and  his 
bride,  and  issued  the  old  sheets  with  certain  can- 
celled pages  under  the  title  of  Revolt  of  Islam. 
It  was  published  in  January  1818. 

"  While  still  resident  at  Marlow,  Shelley  began 
two  autobiographical  poems — the  one  Prince 
Athanase,  which  he  abandoned  as  two  introspec- 
tive and  morbidly  self-analytical,  the  other  Rosa- 
lind and  Helen,  which  he  finished  afterwards  in 
Italy.  Of  the  second  of  these  compositions  he 
entertained  a  poor  opinion ;  nor  will  it  bear  com- 
parison with  his  best  work.  To  his  biographer  its 
chief  interest  consists  in  the  character  of  Lionel, 
drawn  less  perhaps  exactly  from  himself  than  as 
an  ideal  of  the  man  he  would  have  wished  to  be. 
The  poet  in  Alastor,  Laon  in  the  Revolt  of  Islam, 
Lionel  in  Rosalind  and  Helen,  and  Prince  Athanase 
are  in  fact  a  remarkable  row  of  self-portraits,  vary- 
ing in  the  tone  and  scale  of  idealistic  treatment 


138  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

bestowed  upon  them.  Later  on  in  life,  Shelley  out- 
grew this  preoccupation  with  his  idealized  self, 
and  directed  his  genius  to  more  objective  themes/' 
(pp.  96-8,  English  Men  of  Letters.) 

Shelley  in  December  1816,  urged  no  doubt  by 
Godwin,  who  in  spite  of  his  anti-matrimonial  prin- 
ciples was  fully  alive  to  the  advantages  of  his 
daughter  being  properly  married  to  the  heir  to  a 
baronetcy,  married  Mary  Godwin  and  settled  in 
Mario w  to  write  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  and  whilst 
there  he  frequently  ran  up  to  Hampstead  to  Leigh 
Hunt's  house  where  he  met  Keats  and  Peacock 
and  Horace  Smith  and  his  brother,  the  authors  of 
Rejected  Addresses. 

In  1817  his  daughter  Clara  was  born,  and  lest 
the  Lord  Chancellor  should  lay  hands  on  her  too, 
and  also  because  he  himself  showed  signs  of  deli- 
cate health,  he  left  for  Italy  in  the  spring  of  1818, 
never  to  return. 

Only  four  years  of  life  was  now  left  to  Shelley, 
years  filled  with  music  that  will  sound  as  long  as 
English  lasts.  Yet  even  then  he  considered 
poetry  as  "  very  subordinate  to  moral  and  poli- 
tical science  "  but  his  attempts  in  these  directions 
are  all  unfinished  or  fragmentary,  and  he  was  wise 
to  abandon  them  for  poetry. 

Clara  died  an  infant  in  Venice  in  1818,  and  in 
1819  his  three-year-old  son  William  died  at  Rome, 
and  another  son  who  survived  and  became  Sir 
Percy  Florence  Shelley  was  born  at  Florence, 
November  1819. 

From  Italy  he  wrote  a  series  of  letters  to  his 
friend  Peacock,  to  whom  he  generously  made  an 
allowance  of  £100  a  year,  and  these  letters  are 


Shelley  139 

among  Shelley's  best  productions.  The  Shelleys 
visited  Milan,  the  Italian  Lakes,  Venice,  Rome  and 
Naples.  Then  Byron  lent  them  his  villa  at  Este, 
from  which  they  moved  first  to  Rome  and  then  to 
Villa  Valsovano  at  Leghorn.  At  Rome  and  Leg- 
horn he  was  working  at  his  Prometheus  Unbound  ; 
and  this  year  of  1819  is  remarkable  for  the  produc- 
tions of  this  and  another  of  his  chief  works,  The 
Cenci,  begun  and  finished  at  Leghorn.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  The  Cenci  is  the  greatest 
tragedy  written  since  Shakespeare's  time.  He 
rightly  felt  that  it  would  be  popular,  and,  were  it 
not  for  the  difficulty  of  getting  any  great  actress 
to  take  the  part  of  Beatrice,  it  would  make  a  sure 
success  on  the  stage.  The  Prometheus  Unbound 
is  the  sequel  to  the  Prometheus  Bound  of  ^Eschylus  ; 
it  is  quite  unique,  but  difficult.  "  It  was  never 
intended,"  he  says,  "  for  more  than  five  or  six  per- 
sons, though  of  a  higher  character  than  anything  I 
have  yet  attempted/'  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Pro- 
metheus fell  still-born  from  the  press,  and  almost 
everything  Shelley  produced  was  received  with 
howls,  while  personal  abuse  and  unpopularity  were 
his  only  rewards,  and  yet  he  felt,  as  Keats  and 
Wordsworth  had  also  done,  that"  his  work  would 
live.  "This  I  know/'  he  said  to  his  cousin  Cap- 
tain Medwin,  who  lived  with  him  at  Pisa,  "  that 
whether  in  prosing  or  in  versing  there  is  something 
in  my  writings  that  shall  live  for  ever/'  and  again, 
"If  my  feeble  and  irritable  frame  were  willing  to 
obey  the  spirit,  I  fancy  that  I  should  do  great 
things/' 

In  1820  they  went  to  Pisa,  where  the  Medwins 
and  Byron  and  Trelawney  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wil- 


140  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

liams  were  their  constant  companions.  Mrs. 
Williams  is  the  "  Jane  "  to  whom  he  wrote  and 
made  love  with  such  fervent  admiration,  though 
Mr.  Williams  and  Mrs.  Shelley  shared  the  love 
letters.  From  Pisa  they  passed  in  April  1822 
to  Lericci,  on  the  Gulf  of  Spezzia,  but  it  was  at 
Pisa  that  the  two  great  poems,  Epipsychidion  and 
Adonais  were  composed,  in  1821.  Of  the  former 
he  writes  :  "  It  is  an  idealized  history  of  my  life 
and  feelings.  I  think  one  is  always  in  love  with 
something  or  other."  Of  the  latter,  "the  Adonais 
is  the  least  imperfect  of  all  my  compositions, 
better  perhaps  in  point  of  composition  than  any- 
thing I  have  written."  The  charming  little  lyric, 
"  Music  whose  soft  voices  die,"  also  belongs  to  1821. 

The  origin  of  Epipsychidion  is  thus  given  by 
Symonds — 

"  Among  his  Italian  acquaintances  at  Pisa,  was 
a  clever  but  disreputable  Professor,  of  whom  Med- 
win  draws  a  very  piquant  portrait.  This  man  one 
day  related  the  sad  story  of  a  beautiful  and  noble 
lady,  the  Comtessina  Emilia  Viviani,  who  had  been 
confined  by  her  father  in  a  dismal  convent  of  the 
suburbs,  to  await  her  marriage  with  a  distasteful 
husband.  Shelley,  fired  as  ever  by  a  tale  of  tyranny, 
was  eager  to  visit  the  fair  captive.  The  Professor 
accompanied  him  and  Medwin  to  the  convent- 
parlour,  where  they  found  her  more  lovely  than 
even  the  most  glowing  descriptions  had  led  them 
to  expect.  Nor  was  she  only  beautiful.  Shelley 
soon  discovered  that  she  had  '  cultivated  her  mind 
beyond  what  I  have  ever  met  with  in  Italian 
women  ' ;  and  a  rhapsody  composed  by  her  upon 
the  subject  of  Uranian  Love — //  Vero  A  more — 


Shelley  141 

justifies  the  belief  that  she  possessed  an  intellect 
of  more  than  ordinary  elevation.  He  took  Mrs. 
Shelley  to  see  her,  and  both  did  all  they  could  to 
make  her  convent-prison  less  irksome,  by  frequent 
visits,  by  letters,  and  by  presents  of  flowers  and 
books.  It  was  not  long  before  Shelley's  sympathy 
for  this  unfortunate  lady  took  the  form  of  love, 
which,  however  spiritual  and  platonic,  was  not  the 
less  passionate.  The  result  was  the  composition 
of  Epipsychidion,  the  most  unintelligible  of  all 
his  poems  to  those  who  have  not  assimilated  the 
spirit  of  Plato's  Symposium  and  Dante's  Vita 
Nuova.  In  it  he  apostrophizes  Emilia  Viviani 
as  the  incarnation  of  ideal  beauty,  the  universal 
loveliness  made  visible  in  mortal  flesh  : — 

Seraph  of  Heaven  !  too  gentle  to  be  human, 
Veiling  beneath  that  radiant  form  of  woman 
All  that  is  insupportable  in  thee 
Of  light,  and  love,  and  immortality  ! 

He  tells  her  that  he  loves  her,  and  describes  the 
troubles  and  deceptions  of  his  earlier  manhood, 
under  allegories  veiled  in  deliberate  obscurity. 
The  Pandemic  and  the  Uranian  Aphrodite  have 
striven  for  his  soul ;  for  though  in  youth  he  dedi- 
cated himself  to  the  service  of  ideal  beauty,  and 
seemed  to  find  it  under  many  earthly  shapes,  yet 
has  he  ever  been  deluded.  At  last  Emily  appears, 
and  in  her  he  recognizes  the  truth  of  the  vision 
veiled  from  him  so  many  years.  She  and  Mary 
shall  henceforth,  like  sun  and  moon,  rule  the  world 
of  love  within  him.  Then  he  calls  on  her  to  fly. 
They  three  will  escape  and  live  together,  far  away 
from  men,  in  an  ^Egean  island.  The  description 


142  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

of  this  visionary  isle,  and  of  the  life  to  be  led  there 
by  the  fugitives  from  a  dull  and  undiscerning  world, 
is  the  most  beautiful  that  has  been  written  this 
century  in  the  rhymed  heroic  metre. 

It  is  an  isle  under  Ionian  skies, 

Beautiful  as  a  wreck  of  Paradise  ; 

And,  for  the  harbours  are  not  safe  and  good, 

This  land  would  have  remained  a  solitude 

But  for  some  pastoral  people  native  there, 

Who  from  the  Elysian,  clear,  and  golden  air 

Draw  the  last  spirit  of  the  age  of  gold, 

Simple  and  spirited,  innocent  and  bold. 

The  blue  Mgean  girds  this  chosen  home, 

With  ever-changing  sound  and  light  and  foam 

Kissing  the  sifted  sands  and  caverns  hoar  ; 

And  all  the  winds  wandering  along  the  shore 

Undulate  with  the  undulating  tide. 

There  are  thick  woods  where  sylvan  forms  abide  ; 

And  many  a  fountain,  rivulet,  and  pond, 

As  clear  as  elemental  diamond, 

Or  serene  morning  air.     And  far  beyond, 

The  mossy  tracks  made  by  the  goats  and  deer, 

(Which  the  rough  shepherd  treads  but  once  a  year,) 

Pierce  into  glades,  caverns,  and  bowers,  and  halls 

Built  round  with  ivy,  which  the  waterfalls 

Illumining,  with  sound  that  never  fails 

Accompany  the  noonday  nightingales  ; 

And  all  the  place  is  peopled  with  sweet  airs. 

The  light  clear  element  which  the  isle  wears 

Is  heavy  with  the  scent  of  lemon-flowers. 

Which  floats  like  mist  laden  with  unseen  showers, 

And  falls  upon  the  eyelids  like  faint  sleep ; 

And  from  the  moss  violets  and  jonquils  peep, 

And  dart  their  arrowy  odour  through  the  brain, 

Till  you  might  faint  with  that  delicious  pain. 

It  is  a  favoured  place.     Famine  or  Blight, 
Pestilence,  War,  and  Earthquake,  never  light 
Upon  its  mountain-peaks  ;  blind  vultures,  they 
Sail  onward  far  upon  their  fatal  way. 
The  winged  storms,  chanting  their  thunder-psalm 
To  other  lands,  leave  azure  chasms  of  calm 
Over  this  isle,  or  weep  themselves  in  dew, 
From  which  its  fields  and  woods  ever  renew 
Their  green  and  golden  immortality. 


Shelley  143 

"Shelley did  not  publish  Epipsychidionwiih  his 
own  name.  He  gave  it  to  the  world  as  the  com- 
position of  a  man  who  had  '  died  at  Florence,  as 
he  was  preparing  for  a  voyage  to  one  of  the  Spor- 
ades,'  and  he  requested  Oilier  not  to  circulate  it, 
except  among  a  few  intelligent  readers.  It  may 
almost  be  said  to  have  been  never  published,  in 
such  profound  silence  did  it  issue  from  the  press. 
Very  shortly  after  its  appearance  he  described  it 
to  Leigh  Hunt  as  '  a  portion  of  me  already  dead,' 
and  added  this  significant  allusion  to  its  subject 
matter :  '  Some  of  us  have  in  a  prior  existence 
been  in  love  with  an  Antigone,  and  that  makes  us 
find  no  full  content  in  any  mortal  tie.1  In  the 
letter  of  June  18,  1822,  again  he  says  :  '  The 
Epipsychidion  I  cannot  look  at ;  the  person  whom 
it  celebrates  was  a  cloud  instead  of  a  Juno.  If 
you  are  curious,  however,  to  hear  what  I  am  and 
have  been,  it  will  tell  you  something  thereof.  It 
is  an  idealized  history  of  my  life  and  feelings.  I 
think  one  is  always  in  love  with  something  or 
other ;  the  error,  and  I  confess  it  is  not  easy  for 
spirits  cased  in  flesh  and  blood  to  avoid  it,  consists 
in  seeking  in  a  mortal  image  the  likeness  of  what 
is,  perhaps,  eternal/  This  paragraph  contains 
the  essence  of  a  just  criticism.''  (English  Men  of 
Letters,  pp.  138-41.) 

For  Shelley  there  hits  the  blot  on  the  poem.  His 
mistake  was  that  he  worshipped  in  Emily  an  incar- 
nation of  the  ideal  loveliness  instead  of  regarding 
her  as  only  a  step  in  the  ladder,  a  far-off  image  of 
the  ideal  which  to  mortals  is  unattainable.  The 
poem  is  interesting  as  containing  his  doctrine  of 
love ;  and  if  you  wish  to  see  a  good  specimen  of 


144  Introductions  to  tJic  Poets 

Shelley's  most  impassioned  manner  you  have  only 
to  turn  to  the  last  two  pages  of  it. 

At  Pisa  he  also  wrote  Hellas,  in  October  1821, 
on  hearing  that  Greece  was  determined  to  strike 
a  blow  for  freedom.  Hellas  is  a  "  Lyrical  Drama," 
the  beautiful  final  chorus  of  which  begins  with  the 
well-known  lines — 

The  world's  great  age  begins  anew, 

The  golden  years  return, 
The  Earth  doth  like  a  snake  renew 

Her  winter  weeds  outworn  : 
Heaven  smiles,  and  faiths  and  empires  gleam 
Like  wrecks  of  a  dissolving  dream. 

Pisa  also  saw  the  production  of  The  Sensitive 
Plant,  and  most  of  his  beautiful  shorter  poems  such 
as  The  Cloud,  The  Skylark,  Arethusa,  the  Hymns 
to  Apollo  and  Pan,  The  Witch  of  Atlas,  Autumn, 
and  many  little  gems  of  poetry.  Here  too  The 
Invocation  to  Night  and  Ariel  to  Miranda  (Mrs.  Wil- 
liams again)  were  composed,  mostly  out  of  doors, 
and  scribbled  on  any  scrap  of  paper.  About  his 
method  of  composition  he  wrote  :  "  When  my  brain 
gets  heated  with  thought  it  soon  boils  and  throws 
off  images  and  words  faster  than  I  can  skim  them 
off.  In  the  morning,  when  cooled  down,  out  of 
this  '  rude  sketch  '  I  shall  attempt  a  drawing." 

In  1822,  as  the  summer  drew  near,  they  moved 
out  of  Pisa  to  cooler  quarters  in  the  Villa  Magni 
near  Lerici  on  the  Gulf  of  Spezzia.  Here  the  lyric 
When  the  lamp  is  shattered  and  the  Lines  to  a  Lady 
with  a  Guitar  were  written.  A  long  unfinished  poem 
called  The  Triumph  of  Life  was  begun  in  that  diffi- 
cult metre  called  Terza  Rima.  The  lines  are 
iambics  like  blank  verse,  but  the  first  and  third 


Shelley  145 

lines  of  each  three-lined  stanza  rhyme  together — 
the  middle  line  rhymes  with  the  first  and  third  of 
the  next  triplet.  His  last  work  was  in  1821,  and 
from  the  list  of  his  works  we  have  mentioned  as 
written  in  1819,  1820  and  1821,  it  will  be  seen  that 
with  Shelley  as  with  Keats  the  last  years  of  life 
were  one  burst  of  melody  and  that  the  flame  of 
poetry  burnt  brightest  towards  its  close. 

Boating  and  bathing  were  his  delight,  and  he  and 
Williams  had  a  frail  and  crank  little  boat  built 
to  their  own  designs  at  Genoa  called  the  Don  Juan 
by  Byron,  but  re-named  by  Shelley  the  Ariel. 
Byron  had  a  larger  decked  boat  built  at  the  same 
time  called  the  Bolivar.  These  boats  they  had 
when  at  the  "  Villa  Magni  "  on  the  Bay  of  Spezzia, 
whence  on  July  i,  1822,  Shelley  and  Williams  and 
a  young  English  sailor  called  Charles  Vivian,  18 
years  of  age,  sailed  to  Leghorn  to  greet  the  Leigh 
Hunts.  Shelley  drove  with  them  to  Byron's 
Villa  at  Pisa,  and  returning  set  sail  from  Leghorn 
rather  late  in  the  day  of  July  8.  Trelawney  on  the 
Bolivar  watched  them  till  they  disappeared  in  a 
sea-fog  ;  soon  a  tempest  arose  with  wind,  rain  and 
thunder,  it  lasted  only  twenty  minutes,  but  when 
it  cleared  the  Ariel  had  gone.  The  stove-in  side 
of  the  boat  when  dredged  up  showed  that  she  had 
been  run  down  by  a  sharp-prowed  felucca,  but 
whether  accidentally  or  with  evil  intent  it  was  not 
easy  then  to  say.  Two  had  been  seen  by  Trelawney 
to  start  when  Shelley  did  and  to  return  after  the 
storm,  one  having  on  board  an  English-made  oar 
which  may  have  belonged  to  the  Ariel.  Even 
without  a  collision  such  a  boat  was  not  likely  to 
ride  out  a  Mediterranean  squall.  But  forty-one 

i 


146  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

years  later  an  old  fisherman  on  his  death-bed  con- 
fessed how  he  and  four  others  had  run  her  down 
in  a  squall,  thinking  that  Lord  Byron  was  on  board 
with  a  bag  of  gold,  and  that  she  sank  at  once  and 
so  they  got  nothing.  Shelley  had  taken  on  board 
a  canvas  bag  of  Tuscan  crown  pieces,  and  as  the 
crank  little  boat  carried  two  or  three  tons  of  pig- 
iron  to  bring  her  down  to  her  bearings  she 
naturally  sank  at  once  when  the  side  was  stove  in. 
The  bodies  of  Shelley  and  the  lad  were  cast  up 
after  ten  days  and  that  of  Williams  a  day  later,  and 
all  buried  in  the  sand.  A  month  later  two  of  them 
were  cremated  there,  in  the  presence  of  Byron  and 
Leigh  Hunt,  by  Trelawney,  and  Williams's  ashes 
were  sent  home,  but  Shelley's  buried  by  his  son's 
grave  and  not  far  from  Keats,  in  the  Protestant 
cemetery  at  Rome  with  this  inscription — 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

Cor  Cordium 

natus  IV  Aug.  1792.     obiit  July  VIII  1822 
Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade, 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea  change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange. 

His  heart,  which  was  unconsumed  by  the  fire, 
was  given  by  Trelawney  to  Mrs.  Shelley  and  by  her 
to  Leigh  Hunt,  and  by  him  some  years  later  handed 
over  to  Sir  Percy  Shelley  and  deposited  at  Bos- 
combe,  Shelley's  place,  between  Bournemouth  and 
Christchurch.  Mary  Woolstoncraft  Shelley  herself 
many  years  later  was  laid  to  rest  in  the  churchyard 
of  St.  Peter's,  Bournemouth,  not  without  great 
opposition  on  the  part  of  many  of  the  parishioners. 
"  And  so,"  writes  Lady  Shelley,  "  the  sea  and  the 
earth  closed  over  one  who  was  great  as  a  poet  and 


Shelley  147 

still  greater  as  a  philanthropist,  and  of  whom  it 
may  be  said  that  his  wild  spiritual  character  seems 
to  have  prepared  him  for  being  thus  snatched  from 
life  under  circumstances  of  mingled  terror  and 
beauty  while  his  powers  were  yet  in  their  Spring 
freshness  and  age  had  not  come  to  render  the 
Ethereal  body  decrepit  or  to  wither  the  heart 
which  could  not  be  consumed  by  fire/' 

Shelley  has  been  called  "  a  beautiful  and  in- 
effectual angel  beating  in  the  void  his  luminous 
wings  in  vain  "  ;  and  for  many  years  it  was  in  vain 
— witness  the  failure  of  The  Revolt  of  Islam — 
for  this  reason,  that  Shelley  had  not  realized  that 
he  could  not  possibly  represent  the  triumph  of  his 
political  ideas  in  poetry,  as  that  is  not,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  a  fit  subject  for  poetic  representation. 

Keats  pointed  out  this  when  he  said  that  Shelley 
was  not  sufficiently  an  artist.  He  meant — and  we 
have  to  say  the  same  of  Browning  and  of  Coleridge 
in  his  earlier  years — that  he  chose  his  subjects 
badly,  for  he  did  not  stop  to  consider  whether  a 
subject  was  susceptible  of  poetic  treatment.  Hence 
the  inequality  of  his  verse.  But  when  the  subject 
was  right,  even  though  he  wrote  often  in  frenzied 
haste,  who  can  equal  the  lyric  beauty  of  his  verse  ? 
It  seems  more  akin  to  the  waves  of  the  sea  or  the 
winds  and  stars  than  to  any  process  of  human  art. 


JOHN  KEATS 

1795-1821 

MR.  ROBERT  BRIDGES,  to  whose  essay  on  Keats 
I  am  much  indebted,  begins  his  critical  introduction 
to  the  Poems  of  John  Keats  with  this  sentence  : 
"  If  one  English  Poet  might  be  recalled  to-day 
from  the  dead  to  continue  the  work  which  he  left 
unfinished  on  earth,  it  is  probable  that  the  crown  of 
his  country's  desire  would  be  set  on  the  head  of 
John  Keats ;  and  this  general  feeling  is  based 
on  a  judgment  of  his  work  which  we  may  unhesitat- 
ingly accept,  namely,  that  the  best  of  it  is  of  the 
highest  excellence,  but  the  mass  of  it  is  disappoint- 
ing/' 

A  study  of  the  poems  will  probably  lead  us  all 
to  agree  with  this  :  but  to  understand  and  appre- 
ciate Keats  it  is  necessary  that  we  should  be  ac- 
quainted with  the  history  of  his  life,  and  this,  I 
think,  is  more  especially  so  in  his  case  than  in 
that  of  any  other  English  poet. 

His  father  came  from  Cornwall,  and  was  stable- 
man to  John  Jennings,  who  kept  a  livery  stable  at 
the  Swan  and  Hoop,  Moorfields,  in  North  London. 
Having  married  his  employer's  daughter,  Keats 
succeeded  to  the  management  of  the  business  and 
lived  at  the  stable,  where  on  October  29,  1795, 
their  eldest  child,  John,  the  poet,  was  prematurely 

148 


John  Keats  149 

born,  a  fact  which  doubtless  affected  his  tempera- 
ment. The  other  children  who  followed  one  an- 
other at  intervals  of  two  years  were  George, 
Thomas,  Edward,  and  Frances,  of  whom  the  first 
and  last  outlived  John.  Both  his  parents  were 
rather  superior  to  their  station.  The  father  was  a 
remarkably  intelligent  man  of  irreproachable  con- 
duct. The  mother,  and  her  mother  before  her, 
are  spoken  of  as  women  who  combined  uncommon 
talents  with  great  good  sense. 

The  parents  were  anxious  to  do  the  best  they 
could  for  their  sons,  and  thought  of  sending  John 
to  Harrow,  but  the  expense  being  beyond  their 
means  they  sent  him,  when  in  his  eighth  year,  to  a 
good  private  school  kept  by  the  Rev.  John  Clarke 
at  Enfield,  where  Mrs.  Keats'  brothers  had  been 
educated.  Before  this  the  family  had  moved  half 
a  mile  further  north  to  Craven  Street,  City  Road. 
In  1804  Keats  lost  his  father,  who  was  killed  by  a 
fall  from  his  horse  ;  but  Keats  and  his  brothers 
stayed  at  Enfield  for  the  next  six  years.  John, 
as  a  boy,  was  handsome,  pugnacious  and  loveable  ; 
he  excelled  at  all  active  exercises  and  with  a  vehe- 
ment temper  and  a  kind  and  generous  heart  he  is 
described  as  being  "  always  in  extremes."  Books 
he  cared  little  for,  until  his  last  year,  when  he  gave 
all  his  energies  to  reading  and  study.  This  was 
probably  due  to  Mr.  Clarke's  son,  Cowden  Clarke, 
who  taught  him,  and  inspired  him  with  a  love  for 
literature.  In  1810  his  mother  died,  and  John 
was  taken  from  school  and  bound  apprentice  for 
five  years  to  a  surgeon  in  Edmonton.  He  often 
went  back  to  Enfield,  and  borrowed  books  from 
Cowden  Clarke.  One  day  in  1812  or  1813  Clarke 


150  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

read  to  him  Spenser's  Epithalamion.  It  made  a 
deep  impression  on  him,  and  the  Faerie  Queen, 
which  he  carried  home  with  him,  revealed  a  new 
world  to  him  into  which  he  entered  with  ecstasy. 
Naturally  therefore  his  first  poetical  attempt  was 
in  imitation  of  Spenser.  It  was  the  nature  of 
Keats  to  be  dominated  by  successive  poets,  and 
he  took  up  each  new  poet  with  such  eagerness,  and 
so  steeped  himself  in  their  writings,  that  you  may 
always  tell  with  ease  from  the  style  of  his  own 
writing  what  author  he  has  last  been  studying, 
whether  Leigh  Hunt,  Dryden,  Wordsworth,  Milton 
or  Shakespeare.  When  he  reads  Milton  or  Shake- 
speare he  writes  something  like  Milton  or  Shake- 
speare ;  when  Spenser  or  Dryden  or  Leigh  Hunt 
dominate  him,  you  find  his  verse  sparking  with 
Spenser,  constrained  by  Dryden  or  tainted  by 
Hunt's  style ;  but  though  Spenser  gave  way  to 
Homer,  Homer  to  Milton  and  so  on,  it  was  Spenser 
that  furnished  him  in  his  last  and  best  period  with 
his  admiration  for  Greek  Art,  for  he  knew  no  Greek 
himself  and,  though  as  a  boy  he  learnt  his  Lem- 
prieres  Classical  Dictionary  by  heart,  it  was 
Spenser's  handling  of  the  tales  of  Romance  and  his 
own  eager  reading  of  the  Elizabethan  poets  that 
gave  him  the  power  to  write  as  he  did  on  Greek 
subjects. 

In  1815  he  passed  his  medical  examination  and 
was  appointed  dresser  in  Guy's  Hospital.  But 
Poetry  had  taken  possession  of  him,  and  between 
1814  and  1816,  when  he  came  of  age,  he  was  being 
gradually  more  and  more  absorbed  by  it.  In  1815, 
indeed,  he  had  produced  his  sonnet,  Written  on  the 
day  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt  left  prison,  and  in  the  same 


John  Keats  151 

year  when  Cowden  Clarke  had  left  Enfield  and 
come  to  live  in  Clerkenwell,  Keats  frequently  saw 
him,  and  together  they  read  the  translation  of 
Homer  which  resulted  in  Keats'  world-famous 
sonnet,  On  first  looking  into  Chapman  s  Homer. 

The  sonnet  on  Leigh  Hunt's  release  (he  had  been 
imprisoned  for  two  years  for  the  remark  in  the 
Examiner,  which  was  held  to  be  libellous,  that  the 
Prince  Regent  was  in  reality  a  corpulent  man  of 
fifty  without  a  single  claim  on  the  gratitude 
of  his  country),  brought  him  Hunt's  friendship, 
and  Keats  was  immensely  taken  with  him.  With- 
out doubt  Keats  gained  many  valuable  hints  and 
not  a  few  friends  from  Hunt's  kindliness,  but  his 
effect  on  Keats'  style,  as  seen  in  his  early  poems 
which  are  dedicated  to  him,  and  notably  in 
Endymion,  which  was  dedicated  to  Chatterton,  was 
deplorable. 

Hunt,  besides  being  without  depth  of  thought, 
was  often  slipshod  in  language,  and  trivial,  allow- 
ing himself  the  use  of  cant  and  even  vulgar  phrases, 
and  colloquialisms,  and  as  Keats  looked  up  to  Hunt 
it  followed  that  his  admiration  for  Hunt's  Rimini 
led  him  to  copy  his  friend,  and  thus  all  Keats' 
own  faults  and  the  characteristic  defects  of  his 
early  genius  were  accentuated  ;  for  there  was,  by 
the  very  facts  of  his  birth  and  breeding,  a  tendency 
in  Keats  to  vulgarity,  and  especially  in  his  views 
of  women,  with  whom  he  said  that  he  was  never 
quite  at  ease,  for  in  his  Romantic  Spenserian 
manner  he  idealized  them,  and  was  uncomfortable 
when  he  found  them  different,  and  of  course  he 
did  not  come  into  contact  with  any  of  the  ideal 
sort  in  the  kind  of  society  to  which  he  was  born. 


152  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Hence,  knowing  nothing  of  real  ladies  and  taking 
Hunt  for  his  guide,  he  was  content  with  the  vul- 
garly sensuous  or  else  rather  commonplace  females 
to  whom  Hunt's  verse  introduced  him.  He  came 
to  see  his  mistake  later,  but  all  his  life,  while  his 
treatment  of  Nature  is  delicate  and  beautiful,  his 
treatment  of  women  is  quite  unworthy. 

In  1816  Leigh  Hunt  published  in  the  Examiner 
Keats'  Sonnet  0  Solitude,  in  which  the  line — 

Startles  the  wild  bee  from  the  foxglove  bells — 

reminds  one  of  Wordsworth's — 

Bees  that  soar  for  bloom 
High  on  the  highest  peak  of  Furness  fells, 
Will  murmur  by  the  hour  in  foxglove  bells, 

and  we  know  that,  though  he  did  not  really  like 
him,  he  did  get  a  great  deal  from  his  study  of 
Wordsworth. 

In  1817  Keats  published  his  first  volume,  of 
which  the  first  poem,  /  stood  tiptoe,  was  originally 
called  Endymion,  and  it  is  in  the  same  metre  and 
the  same  style.  It  opens  very  happily  ;  but  the 
natural  beauties  of  wood  and  garden  crowd  rather 
thickly  on  each  other's  heels ;  a  pretty  de- 
scription of  the  minnows  in  the  stream,  evidently 
the  model  of  Tennyson's  lines  in  Enid  and  Gemini, 
is  followed  by  the  entrance  of  the  dreadful  female 
of  the  Huntian  type  which  at  once  vulgarizes  the 
whole  scene,  and  the  worst  of  it  is  that  Keats 
evidently  thinks  that  he  is  introducing  a  lovely 
creation  and  handling  the  subject  with  taste  and 
delicacy.  There  are  many  beautiful  thoughts  and 
fancies  in  the  poem,  such  as — 


John  Keats  153 

and  then  there  crept 

A  little  noiseless  noise  among  the  leaves, 
Born  of  the  very  sigh  that  silence  leaves ; 

or  again — 

Here  are  sweet  peas  on  tiptoe  for  a  flight 
With  wings  of  gentle  flush  o'er  delicate  white 

There  are  also  the  first  of  many  beautiful  lines 
about  the  moon,  in  which  Keats  specially  delighted, 
and  some  fine  lines  such  as  "  Full  in  the  speculation 
of  the  stars  "  ;  but  these  are  sadly  overlaid  by  the 
repeated  "  kisses  "  and  "  blisses  "  and  other  vul- 
garities which  constantly  offend  against  good 
taste.  Later  in  life  he  became  conscious  that  his 
women  were  failures  and  says  in  a  letter  that  one 
cause  of  the  unpopularity  of  his  book  was  his 
tendency  to  class  Women  with  Roses  and  Sweet- 
meats ;  but  he  did  not  live  long  enough  to  be  able 
to  see  that  there  was  any  vulgarity  in  them.  The 
volume  contains  the  two  sonnets  we  have  men- 
tioned above  and  ends  with  a  very  remarkable 
poem  called  Sleep  and  Poetry.  In  the  poem  Sleep, 
which  figures  the  unawakened  intelligence,  is  subor- 
dinated to  Poetry,  which  reveals  the  mystery  of 
life  and  Nature,  or  what  Wordsworth  calls  "  the 
soul  of  lonely  places/'  and  inspires  ambition. 
Keats  states  his  devotion  to  poetry  and  prays  for 
inspiration  ;  but,  with  a  strange  pathetic  presci- 
ence, he  doubts  whether  fate  will  grant  him  length 
of  days.  There  is  one  very  remarkable  passage, 
lines  101  to  162,  the  meaning  of  which  is  precisely 
the  same  as  that  in  Wordsworth's  Tintern  Abbey ; 
concerning  this  Keats  explains  his  own  ideas  in 
a  letter  to  Reynolds,  written  in  1818,  thus: 
"  I  compare  human  life  to  a  large  Mansion  of 


154  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

many  apartments,  two  of  which  I  can  only  de- 
scribe, the  doors  of  the  rest  being  as  yet  shut  to  me. 
To  put  it  shortly,  The  first  is  the  infant  chamber  in 
which  we  remain  as  long  as  we  do  not  think,  the 
second  is  the  chamber  of  Maiden-thought  when  we 
become  intoxicated  with  the  light  and  the  pleasant 
wonders,  and  think  of  staying  there  for  ever,  but 
the  increasing  sense  of  the  World's  miseries  and 
wrongs  gradually  darken  the  atmosphere ;  and 
now  many  doors  appear,  but  all  leading  to  dark 
passages,  and  we  are  in  a  mist.  To  this  point  was 
Wordsworth  come,  as  far  as  I  can  conceive,  when 
he  wrote  T intern  Abbey  ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that 
his  genius  is  explorative  of  these  dark  passages/' 
Wordsworth  describes  Keats'  first  chamber  as — 

The  coarser  pleasures  of  my  boyish  days 
And  their  glad  animal  movements. 

In  the  parallel  passage  to  this  Keats  says  that  life 
is — 

A  pigeon  tumbling  in  clear  Summer  air, 
A  laughing  schoolboy  "without  grief  or  care, 
Riding  the  springy  branches  of  an  elm. 

He  then  prays  for  ten  years  in  which  he  may  over- 
whelm himself  in  poesy,  when  he  says  he  will 
pass  the  realms ' '  of  Flora  and  old  Pan  "  and  choose 
each  pleasure  that  his  fancy  sees.  This  is  the 
second  chamber,  and  Keats'  own  mental  attitude 
to  Nature  is  well  described  in  the  parallel  picture 
of  Chamber  II  in  Wordsworth,  who  describing 
his  own  youthful  days  says — 

The  sounding  cataract 

Haunted  me  like  a  passion  ;  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 


John  Keats  155 

Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite  ;  a  feeling  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm 
By  thoughts  supplied. 

Both  Keats  and  Wordsworth  were  eminently 
poets  of  Nature  with  this  difference,  that  Keats  de- 
scribes the  beauties  he  sees  in  Nature  while  Words- 
worth describes  the  effect  upon  himself  and  upon 
humanity  of  those  beauties,  and  their  spiritual 
essence,  for  to  him  the  physical  and  the  moral  law 
were  one.  The  mountains  and  the  aspects  of 
Nature  filled  him  with  solemn  thoughts :  hence 
his  poetry  "  sends  its  dignified  and  deep  music 
into  the  heart  of  Man."  1 

Sweet  as  these  studies  of  Nature  have  been  to 
him,  Keats  now  sees  that  he  must  reach  forward 
to  something  more  satisfying ;  he  asks  himself — 

And  can  I  ever  bid  these  joys  farewell  ? 

and  he  answers  at  once — 

Yes,  I  must  pass  them  for  a  nobler  life, 
Where  I  may  find  the  agonies,  the  strife 
Of  human  hearts. 

That,  he  truly  felt,  was  the  subject  for  the  highest 
poetry  and  that  he  set  himself  to  attain.  He 
then  proceeds  to  describe  the  third  Chamber,  but 
he  does  it  in  lines  whose  meaning  is  as  obscure 
as  the  parallel  description  in  Wordsworth  is  clear. 
Keats  says — 

Lo,  I  see  afar 

O'er-sailing  the  blue  cragginess,  a  car 
And  steeds  with  streamy  manes — the  charioteer 
Looks  out  upon  the  winds  with  glorious  fear  : 

1  See  Introduction  to  Stopford  Brooke's  Selections 
from  Wordsworth. 


156  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

And  now  the  numerous  tramplings  quiver  lightly 

Above  a  huge  cloud's  ridge  .  .  . 

And  now  I  see  that  on  a  green  hillside 

The  charioteer  with  wondrous  gesture  talks 

To  the  trees  and  mountains  :  and  there  soon  appear 

Shapes  of  delight,  of  mystery,  and  fear,"  etc. 

Wordsworth's  fine  passage  is  this — 

And  I  have  felt 

A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thought ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  : 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things. 

Evidently  Wordsworth   has  attained   the   sunlit 
heights  whilst  Keats  is  still  groping  in  the  mist  of 
the  valley. 
After  this  he  asks — 

Is  there  so  small  a  range 

In  the  present  strength  of  manhood,  that  the  high 
Imagination  cannot  freely  fly 
As  she  was  wont  of  old  ? 

Then  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  Elizabethan 
poets — 

.  .  .  Here  her  altar  shone 
Even  in  this  isle ;  and  who  could  paragon 
The  fervid  choir  that  lifted  up  a  noise 
Of  harmony  ?   .  .  . 
Could  all  this  be  forgotten  ?     Yes. 

Then  follows  the  well-known  invective  against  the 
Augustan  School,  with  a  prophecy  of  the  coming 
revival  and  a  definition  of  the  true  object,  or  as  he 
calls  it— 


John  Keats  157 

The  great  end 

Of  poesy,  that  it  should  be  a  friend 
To  soothe  the  cares  and  lift  the  thoughts  of  man. 

In  his  denunciation  of  Boileau  and  the  August  ans 
he  has  some  very  fine  lines — 

Ah,  dismal  souled  ! 

The  winds  of  heaven  blew,  the  ocean  roll'd 
Its  gathering  waves — ye  felt  it  not.     The  blue 
Bared  its  eternal  bosom,  and  the  dew 
Of  Summer  nights  collected  still  to  make 
The  morning  precious  :  beauty  was  awake  ! 
Why  were  ye  not  awake  ? 

He  ends  the  poem  by  saying  of  his  lines — 

Howsoever  they  be  done 
I  leave  them  as  a  father  does  his  son. 

He  was  conscious  of  great  shortcomings  and  of 
great  desires  after  better  things ;  but  there  are 
many  single  lines  and  passages  which  show  that, 
young  as  he  was,  he  had  the  true  poetic  instinct, 
though  the  accidents  of  his  surroundings  were 
against  him. 

He  had  been  working  in  1816  and  1817  at  his 
longest  poem  Endymion,  and  in  1818  it  was  pub- 
lished. It  is  impossibly  tedious  to  read.  Keats 
himself  calls  it  "  a  great  trial  of  invention/'  for 
he  had  "  to  fill  4,000  lines  with  one  bare  circum- 
stance/' It  is  a  curious  medley  of  Classic  and 
Romantic,  of  imagination  and  Nature.  The 
movement  is  difficult  to  follow  and  there  is  a 
monotony  about  the  action  and  a  sameness  in  the 
oft-repeated  and  cloying  epithets,  but  the  poem 
opens  finely,  and  throughout  there  occur  passages 
of  great  beauty,  while  the  Ode  to  Sorrow  in  Book 
IV  is  one  of  Keats'  greatest  achievements.  In  all 


158  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

the  poems  the  effect  of  his  study  and  admiration  for 
Spenser  is  evident ;  he  needed  no  one  to  point  out 
to  him  the  beauty  in  even  the  commonest  things 
in  Nature,  and  if  only  he  could  have  added  to  the 
loveliness  of  his  maidens  the  spirituality  which 
Spenser  breathed  into  them,  they  would  have  been 
of  a  more  pleasing  type.  In  spite  of  his  determina- 
tion to  delineate  human  passion,  he  never  suc- 
ceeded, and  possibly  for  the  very  reason  that  he 
was  so  devoted  to  natural  beauty.  He  speaks  in 
one  of  the  Odes  of  his  Muse  being — 

Unintellectual  but  Divine  to  me. 

The  appearance  of  Endymion  was  greeted  by 
violent  attacks  full  of  ill-natured  personalities, 
both  in  Blackwood  and  the  Quarterly  Review, 
notwithstanding  the  modest  preface  in  which 
Keats  had  shown  how  perfectly  he  was  aware  of 
the  many  faults  of  the  poem.  These  attacks  met 
him  on  his  return  in  weak  health  from  a  Northern 
tour.  He  saw  his  brother  George  and  his  bride  off 
from  Liverpool  for  America,  and  then  with  his 
friend  Brown,  one  of  the  many  singularly  kind  and 
helpful  friends  whom  the  charm  of  his  nature 
attracted  to  him,  he  started  for  Lancaster  and 
passed  through  the  English  Lakes  from  Bowness 
to  Bassenthwaite,  visiting  the  Druid  Circle  near 
Keswick,  from  which  he  draws  a  beautiful  simile  in 
Hyperion — 

Like  a  dismal  Cirque 
Of  Druid  stones  upon  a  forlorn  moor, 
When  the  chill  rain  begins  at  shut  of  eve 
In  dull  November,  and  their  chancel  vault 
The  heaven  itself  is  blinded  throughout  night. 


John  Keats  159 

Thence  they  went  to  Carlisle  and  Dumfries,  the 
home  of  Burns,  and  after  walking  along  the  south- 
west coast  they  crossed  to  Ireland  and  back  to 
Ayr,  then  to  Glasgow  and  Oban,  after  which  they 
did  some  very  hard  walking  up  into  the  Highlands 
and,  the  inns  being  of  the  worst,  they  suffered 
much  discomfort ;  finally  an  expedition  to  Mull, 
over  bad  ground  in  severe  weather,  was  quite  too 
much  for  Keats.  His  throat  gave  him  trouble,  and 
he  was  ordered  home  by  sea.  This  was  the  first 
appearance  of  a  real  breakdown  in  health  from 
which  may  be  traced  the  development  of  that 
hereditary  tendency  to  consumption  which  carried 
him  off  three  years  later. 

On  seeing  the  reviews,  Keats  at  first  said  he 
would  write  no  more  poetry,  but  he  soon  recovered 
his  equanimity,  and  wrote  :  "  Praise  or  blame  has 
but  a  momentary  effect  on  the  man  whose  love 
of  beauty  in  the  abstract  makes  him  a  severe 
critic  on  his  own  work,"  and  with  that  prescience 
which  all  great  poets  seem  to  have,  he  writes  in 
another  letter  :  "  This  is  a  mere  matter  of  the 
moment ;  I  think  I  shall  be  among  the  English 
Poets  after  my  death." 

During  the  rest  of  1818  and  all  1819  Keats 
worked  hard.  He  had  been  reading  Shakespeare 
and  Milton  and  under  their  inspiration  he  accom- 
plished his  best  work.  The  volume  published 
in  1820  contained  not  only  his  great  though  un- 
finished epic  Hyperion,  but  also  those  famous 
Odes  by  writing  which  alone  he  stands  in  the 
top  rank  of  English  Poets.  These  are  the  Odes  to 
a  Nightingale,  to  Psyche,  on  Melancholy,  on  Indo- 
lence, on  a  Grecian  Urn  and  To  Autumn,  for  the 


160  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

fragment  of  the  May  Ode  with  its  famous  line- 
Leaving  great  verse  unto  a  little  clan 

and  the  Ode  to  Sorrow  in  Endymion,  Book  IV, 
had  been  written  earlier. 

The  most  faultless  of  these  is  the  Ode  to  Autumn, 
which  has  been  truly  styled  "a  masterpiece  of 
English  poetry/'  But  it  nowhere  equals  the 
splendour  of  The  Nightingale,  which  though  not 
faultless  contains  more  beauty  than  any  other 
poem  in  our  language  of  equal  length,  and  the  last 
six  lines  of  each  of  the  two  first  stanzas  are  among 
the  most  priceless  gems  of  English  literature. 

Keats  delighted  in  the  song  of  a  nightingale 
whose  nest  was  in  his  friend  Brown's  garden  at 
Hampstead,  and  Brown  tells  us  how  the  poet 
one  morning  took  a  chair  out  and  sat  under  a 
plum  tree  for  two  or  three  hours,  and  on  returning 
to  the  house  he  quietly  thrust  some  scraps  of 
paper  behind  the  books,  but  Brown,  with  the 
author's  help,  got  the  stanzas  arranged  and  copied 
out  and  was  allowed  to  do  the  same  good  office 
afterwards  for  several  poems.  Keats  when  once 
he  had  voiced  his  feeling  seeming  to  care  little 
what  became  of  his  lines ;  indeed  he  had  written 
in  the  previous  year,  "  I  feel  assured  I  should  write 
from  the  mere  yearning  and  fondness  I  have  for 
the  beautiful,  even  if  my  night's  labours  should 
be  burnt  every  morning,  and  no  eye  ever  rest 
upon  them." 

It  is  curious  to  note  that  in  the  first  transcripts 
the  two  world-famous  lines — 

Charmed  magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  in  faery  lands  forlorn 


John  Keats  161 

had  instead  of  "magic"  and  "perilous,"  "the 
wide  "  casements  and  "  keelless  "  seas. 

The  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  would  by  many  be 
placed  next  in  order  of  merit.  Keats  was  capti- 
vated by  the  grace  and  beauty  of  the  Elgin  Marbles 
to  which  Haydon  had  introduced  him. 

Hyperion,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  the  best  epic  we 
have  since  Milton.  In  it  is  set  forth  the  fruitless 
struggle  of  the  Titans,  the  earliest  forces  of  the 
Universe,  against  the  newer  dynasty  whose  rule 
is  based  on  a  higher  principle  than  mere  brute 
force.  This  struggle  culminates  in  the  fall  of 
Hyperion,  the  flaming  Sun  god,  before  Apollo  the 
God  of  light  and  song,1  for 

'Tis  the  eternal  law 
That  first  in  beauty  should  be  first  in  might. 

The  poem  has  many  superb  passages,  and  falls  off 
occasionally  to  the  old  weak  manner  which  be- 
trays the  author  of  Endymion.  But  Keats  broke  it 
off,  saying  that  it  was  too  Miltonic  and  artificial ; 
really  the  fault  in  it  is  the  same  as  that  in  Endymion, 
it  has  little  in  it  but  imagination,  and  the  story 
does  not  grow  in  a  natural  consecutive  manner. 
To  quote  from  Mr.  Bridges  :  "  The  first  two  books 
describe  the  conditions  of  the  Older  Gods,  and  are 
impassioned  with  defeat,  dismay,  and  collapse  ; 
the  third  introduces  the  New  Hierarchy,  and  we 
expect  to  find  them  radiant,  confident  and  irresisti- 
ble ;  but  there  is  no  change  in  the  colour  of  the 
poem ;  of  the  two  Deities  introduced,  Apollo  is 

1  See  Prof.  De  Selincourts'  Introduction  to  the  Poems  of 
John  Keats. 

M 


162  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

weeping  and  raving,  and  Mnemosyne,  who  has 
deserted  the  Old  Dynasty  for  her  hope  in  the  New, 
'  Wails  morn  and  eventide/  It  is  plain  that  the 
story  was  strangling  itself/*  Keats  had  been  at 
work  on  it  from  September,  1818  to  September 
1819,  the  time  when  nearly  all  his  best  work  was 
being  done,  for,  besides  Hyperion  and  the  Odes 
the  1820  volume  contains  Lamia,  Isabella  and 
The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  the  latter  being  Spenserian 
in  form.  This  was  the  last  volume  brought  out 
by  Keats,  but  a  considerable  number  of  poems 
were  published  after  his  death,  amongst  these  one 
lyric  of  surprising  beauty,  written  in  1818.  La 
Belle  Dame  sans  Merci.  This  and  The  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes  are  companion  pictures  of  the  Love 
which  is  life  and  the  Love  which  is  death. 
Isabella  is  Boccaccio's  story,  but  while  Boccaccio 
dwells  on  the  incidents,  which  are  horrible  enough, 
Keats  concerns  himself  with  the  passion  of  the 
story,  and  by  his  beautiful  language  and  by  the 
sympathy  it  invokes  he  raises  the  story  to  the  level 
of  genuine  tragedy.  Lamia,  though  not  a  pleasant 
subject,  shows  the  influence  of  Dryden  in  the  good 
construction  of  the  story,  but  it  is  disfigured  by 
the  bad  taste  already  spoken  of,  which  Keats 
never  outgrew.  Lastly  we  have  the  re-cast  of 
Hyperion,  called  The  Fall  of  Hyperion,  a  Vision, 
which  was  undertaken  by  Keats  late  in  1819. 
In  this  the  Greek  Mnemosyne  is  changed  into  the 
Roman  Moneta,  who  conveys  the  poet,  in  a  trance, 
to  the  scene  of  Saturn's  overthrow ;  but  first  she 
shows  him  how  useless  and  miserable  are  the  lives 
of  those  who  are  indifferent  to  the  troubles  of  their 
fellow-men. 


John  Keats  163 

4 'None  can  usurp  this  height,"  returned  the  shade, 
"But  those  to  whom  the  miseries  of  the  world 
Are  misery,  and  will  not  let  them  rest." 

Keats  shows  in  this  that  he  was  realizing  his  desire 
for  a  nobler  life  and  a  loftier  theme,  by  pursuing 
which  he  might  become 

The  mighty  poet  of  the  human  heart, 

and  though  he  always  conceived  of  the  true  poet 
as  a  prophet  and  seer  he  has  evidently  come  to 
value  the  life  of  action  and  conduct  above  that  of 
meditation  and  poetry,  and  condemns  as  selfish 
the  merely  artistic  life  he  had  been  leading,  for 
he  is  now  preaching  that  actual  contact  and  sym- 
pathy with  human  misery  and  sorrow  are  the  only 
school  for  real  insight/'1 

In  the  re-cast  of  Hyperion  Keats  arrived  at 
greater  severity  of  style  ;  amongst  other  improve- 
ments he  did  away  with  the  vocative  O  so 
frequently  recurring  in  the  first  Hyperion  and  in 
Endymion.  Take  for  example  Hyp.  I.  50,  the  lines — 

Would  come  in  these  like  accents  ;  O  how  frail 
To  that  large  utterance  of  the  early  gods  ! 
Saturn,  look  up  !  though  wherefore  poor  old  king  ? 
I  have  no  comfort  for  thee,  no  not  one  : 
I  cannot  say,  O  wherefore  sleepest  thou  ? 
For  heaven  is  parted  from  thee,  and  the  earth 
Knows  thee  not,  thus  afflicted,  for  a  God. 

In  the  Re-cast,  the  two  O's  are  struck  out,  and  the 
word  "  accents  "  becomes  "  accenting  "  ;  and  instead 
of  "  0  wherefore  "  we  have  "  Where] ore  thus."  This 
added  thus  causes  the  thus,  in  the  next  line  but  one 
to  be  changed  to  so,  and  then  to  prevent  the  repe- 

1  R.  Bridges,  Introduction,  p.  lii. 


164  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

tition  of  Wherefore  in  lines  3  and  5,  line  3  is  altered 
to  "  and  for  what,  poor  lost  king  "  ;  lost  being  substi- 
tuted for  the  hackneyed  poor  old  king.1 

Of  sonnets  Keats  wrote  some  sixty,  of  which 
twelve  or  thirteen  are  of  great  merit.  That  on  the 
death  of  Leander  is  pre-eminent,  as  also  his  early 
one  on  Chapman's  Homer  and  the  last  of  all  his 
writings,  Bright  Star. 

The  drama  Otho  the  Great  was  written  in  colla- 
boration with  Brown,  who  found  the  incidents 
which  Keats  put  into  verse.  He  was  disappointed 
at  its  being  returned  to  him  unread  after  it  had 
been  accepted,  for  like  so  many  others  his  "  great- 
est ambition,"  he  said,  was  "  to  write  a  few  fine 
plays." 

All  the  magnificent  work  which  is  in  the  1820 
volume  was  so  far  in  advance  of  his  previous  work 
that  one  can  best  think  with  wonder  on  what  he 
might  have  gone  on  to,  had  life  been  granted  him. 
Faults  of  taste  might  have  been  corrected  and  we 
should  have  had  a  larger  body  of  good  poetry  from 
him,  but  it  is  not  possible  that  he  could  ever  have 
surpassed  the  lyrical  beauty  of  his  best  Odes. 

Shelley  was  only  30,  and  Byron  36  when  he  died  ; 
Keats  was  but  25,  and  only  four  years  of  this  short 
span  had  been  occupied  in  writing.  Happily  he 
wrote  fast  and  produced  nearly  all  his  great  work 
in  twenty  months,  between  March  1818  and 
October  1819,  before  he  had  completed  his  twenty- 
fourth  year.  The  first  nine  months  of  1819  was 
his  most  productive  time.  Five  of  his  six  great 
Odes  were  written  in  the  four  months  between 
January  and  June.  That  to  Autumn  was  com- 
1  R.  Bridges,  Introduction,  p.  xlii. 


John  Keats  165 

posed  in  October,  at  Winchester,  where  Keats 
spent  the  last  good  days  of  his  life.  For  in  this 
very  year  of  his  marvellous  poetic  output  he  had 
much  to  contend  with.  His  brother  Tom,  whom 
he  nursed  with  constant  care,  had  died  of  con- 
sumption in  October  1818,  and  it  was  soon  after 
this  that  he  began  to  work  at  Hyperion  and  St. 
Agnes  Eve.  Then  he  had  fallen  under  the  spell  of 
love,  and  had  become  engaged  to  Miss  Fanny 
Brawne.  She  was  not  perhaps  quite  suited  to  him, 
though  she  nursed  him  tenderly  through  his  last 
weeks  in  England.  But  his  passion  for  her  was 
incredibly  violent,  and  an  absolutely  consuming 
flame.  This,  combined  with  urgent  pecuniary 
difficulties — for  his  poetry  was  bringing  him  in 
neither  money  nor  fame — and  worst  of  all  the 
wasting  of  his  frame  from  the  inroads  of  his  fatal 
ailment,  made  a  threefold  burden  under  which 
a  stronger  man  might  well  have  sunk. 

As  the  winter  came  on,  his  sufferings  increased, 
and  on  February  3, 1820,  he  got  a  chill  when  riding 
on  the  outside  of  a  coach.  Brown,  seeing  how  ill 
he  was,  got  him  quickly  to  bed.  He  coughed 
slightly,  and  called  to  Brown  to  bring  a  candle,  and, 
after  examining  a  drop  of  blood  on  the  sheet,  said 
with  perfect  calmness:  "I  know  the  colour  of 
that  blood,  it  is  arterial  blood  ;  I  cannot  be  de- 
ceived in  that  colour  ;  that  drop  of  blood  is  my 
death  warrant ;  I  must  die." 

Keats  knew  what  he  was  talking  about.  He 
had  not  been  at  Guy's  Hospital  for  nothing.  He 
lived  for  twelve  months,  but  it  was  a  life  in  death. 
In  a  letter  to  his  sister  he  says  :  "  How  astonish- 
ingly does  the  chance  of  leaving  the  world  impress 


1 66  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

a  sense  of  its  natural  beauties  upon  us  !  Like  poor 
Falstaff ,  though  I  do  not '  babble  '  I  think  of  green 
fields,  I  muse  with  the  greatest  affection  on  every 
flower  I  have  known  from  my  infancy." 

The  only  work  he  did  after  this  was  the  seeing 
through  the  press  his  1820  volume,  which  came 
out  in  July.  His  wonderful  lyric  La  belle  Dame 
sans  Merci  was  not  included  because  Keats  had  let 
Leigh  Hunt  have  it  for  his  periodical,  The  Indicator. 
Hunt  in  return  published  in  his  August  number  an 
able  and  appreciative  review  of  the  volume,  and 
Jeffrey  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  of  the  same  month 
also  noticed  it  favourably. 

The  first  version  of  La  belle  Dame  has  been 
displaced  in  some  editions  by  a  revised  version 
be  inning — 

O,  what  can  ail  thee,  wretched  wight, 
but  the  first  is  far  the  best — 

O  what  can  ail  thee,  knight-at-arms. 

This  gives,  as  Mr.  Bridges  points  out,  "  the  key- 
note of  romance  and  of  aloofness  from  real  life  ; 
and  the  suggestion  of  armour  is  of  the  greatest 
value  to  the  general  colouring." 

Keats  doubtless  got  his  refrain  in  the  fourth  and 
the  last  line  from  W.  Browne's  Britannia's  Pas- 
torals, where  we  read — 

Slide  soft,  ye  silver  floods, 

And  every  spring, 
Within  the  shady  woods 

Let  no  bird  sing  ! 

but  the  title  is  that  of  an  old  French  chanson,  of 
which  a  translation  is  attributed  to  Chaucer. 


John  Keats  167 


LA  BELLE  DAME  SANS  MERCI 
A  BALLAD 


O  what  can  ail  thee,  knight-at-arms, 
Alone  and  palely  loitering  ? 

The  sedge  has  wither'd  from  the  lake, 
And  no  birds  sing. 

ii 

0  what  can  ail  thee,  knight-at-arms, 
So  haggard  and  so  woe-begone  ? 

The  squirrel's  granary  is  full, 
And  the  harvest's  done. 

in 

1  see  a  lily  on  thy  brow, 

With  anguish  moist  and  fever-dew, 
And  on  thy  cheeks  a  fading  rose 
Fast  wi there th  too. 


I  met  a  lady  in  the  meads, 
Full  beautiful — a  fairy's  child, 

Her  hair  was  long,  her  foot  was  light, 
And  her  eyes  were  wild. 


I  made  a  garland  for  her  head, 

And  bracelets  too,  and  fragrant  zone  , 

She  look'd  at  me  as  she  did  love, 
And  made  sweet  moan. 


I  set  her  on  my  pacing  steed, 

And  nothing  else  saw  all  day  long, 

For  sidelong  would  she  bend,  and  sing 
A  fairy's  song. 

VII 

She  found  me  roots  of  relish  sweet 
And  honey  wild,  and  manna-dew, 


168  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

And  sure  in  language  strange  she  said — 
"  I  love  thee  true." 


VIII 

She  took  me  to  her  elfin  grot, 

And  there  she  wept,  and  sigh'd  full  sore, 

And  there  I  shut  her  wild,  wild  eyes 
With  kisses  four. 

IX 

And  there  she  lulled  me  asleep, 

And  there  I  dream'd — Ah  !  woe  betide, 

The  latest  dream  I  ever  dream'd 
On  the  cold  hill's  side. 


I  saw  pale  kings  and  princes  too, 

Pale  warriors,  death-pale  were  they  all  j 

They  cried,  "  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci 
Hath  thee  in  thrall !  " 

XI 

I  saw  their  starved  lips  in  the  gloam, 
With  horrid  warning  gaped  wide, 

And  I  awoke  and  found  me  here, 
On  the  cold  hill's  side. 

XII 

And  this  is  why  I  sojourn  here, 

Alone  and  palely  loitering, 
Though  the  sedge  is  withered  from  the  lake, 

And  no  birds  sing. 

Before  his  book  was  out  he  had  fresh  attacks  of 
haemorrhage,  and  was  taken  in  and  tended  with 
devoted  care  by  the  Leigh  Hunts.  In  August  he 
moved  back  to  Hampstead,  where  the  Brownes 
nursed  him  in  their  house,  but  the  doctor  had 
warned  him  against  wintering  in  England.  This 
came  to  Shelley's  ears,  and  he  wrote,  urging  him  to 
come  out  and  take  up  his  abode  with  them  at  Pisa. 


John  Keats  169 

He  replied  doubtfully,  but  just  then  a  companion 
turned  up  in  the  person  of  Joseph  Severn,  who  had 
won  the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Academy  for  an 
historical  painting,  and  was  going  out  to  work  in 
Rome.  The  two  sailed  in  the  Maria  Crowther  on 
September  18,  1820,  but  contrary  winds  detained 
them  in  the  Channel  for  a  fortnight,  and  it  was 
after  landing  near  Lulworth,  on  the  Dorset  coast, 
on  September  28,  that  he  wrote  on  board  ship  his 
last  sonnet  Bright  Star,  with  its  beautiful  allusion 
to  the  sea  washing  the  shores  of  the  land  he  was 
leaving  never  to  see  again. 

KEATS'  LAST  SONNET 

Bright  star  !  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art — 
Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night, 

And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart, 
Like  Nature's  patient  sleepless  Eremite, 

The  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 
Of  pure  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores. 

Or  gazing  on  the  new  soft  fallen  mask 

Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors — 

No — yet  still  steadfast,  still  unchangeable, 
Pillow'd  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast, 

To  feel  for  ever  its  soft  fall  and  swell, 
Awake  for  ever  in  a  sweet  unrest, 

Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender- taken  breath, 

And  so  live  ever — or  else  swoon  to  death. 

After  a  long  and  rough  passage  they  reached 
Naples.  Here  Keats  got  another  letter  from  Shelley 
praising  the  new  volume,  and  especially  Hyperion, 
and  again  urging  him  to  come  to  Pisa,  but  he 
wished  to  stick  to  Severn.  They  reached  Rome  in 
November.  In  December  Keats  had  another 
relapse,  and  for  the  next  two  months  he  suffered 


170  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

greatly.  He  was  nursed  all  the  time  most  tenderly 
by  Severn  till  his  release  came  on  February  23, 1821. 
He  was  buried  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  at 
Rome,  near  the  pyramid  of  Caius  Cestius.  Severn 
now  lies  beside  him,  and  Shelley's  ashes,  collected 
from  the  fire  by  Trelawney,  are  buried  not  far  off. 
In  April  1909  a  Keats-Shelley  memorial  was  opened 
by  the  King  of  Italy  in  the  house  in  which  Keats 
died,  which  has  been  acquired  and  properly  fur- 
nished and  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  the  two 
poets  by  their  admirers  in  England  and  America. 
It  contains  books,  photographs  and  MSS.,  many  of 
them  of  great  interest,  and  is  a  standing  contradic- 
tion to  the  words  Keats  begged  to  have  inscribed 
on  his  tomb.  "  Here  lies  one  whose  name  was 
writ  in  water/'  So,  in  this  beautiful  resting 
place  we  leave  him,  having  seen  that  he  was  a 
master  of  melody,  and  the  poet  above  all  things  of 
the  beauties  of  Nature.  The  moon  first  of  all, 
and  next  to  the  moon  the  stars,  the  winds,  the 
forests,  the  birds,  the  flowers,  the  glancing  stream 
and  the  play  of  sunlight,  all  had  a  fascination  for 
him  and  affected  him  intensely.  The  billowing 
of  the  wind  through  foliage  or  the  sight  of  it  passing 
in  waves  over  a  field  of  corn  put  him  into  an  ecstasy 
of  delight.  Indeed  Beauty  in  all  forms  he  de- 
voutly worshipped,  and  as  the  Beauty  of  Nature 
is  his  invariable  resource  for  expressing  the  emo- 
tions of  the  soul  he  failed  in  the  delineation  of 
human  passion,  but  in  this  same  cause  lies  the 
secret  of  the  spell  that  Greek  Mythology  exercised 
over  him  ;  the  beauty  of  the  human  form  taking 
to  the  Greek  the  place  which  the  beauties  of  Nature 
held  in  Keats'  mind.  We  have  seen  that  he  was 


John  Keats  171 

conscious  almost  from  the  first  that  he  must  get 
beyond  descriptions  of  Nature  to  become  truly 
great,  and  must  portray  the  emotions  of  the 
human  heart ;  and,  had  he  lived,  he  would  pro- 
bably have  attained  to  this,  but  dying  so  young 
he  never  reached  it  and  so  falls  short  of  perfection. 
But  granting  this,  and  in  spite  of  his  faults  of 
style  and  taste,  no  one  can  doubt  that  he  has 
written  some  of  the  loveliest  masterpieces  of 
English  poetry.  We  have  seen  how  much  he  draws 
from  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Milton  and  Shakespeare, 
and  again  from  Dryden  and  Wordsworth,  and  we 
may  consider  his  place  to  be  midway  between  the 
Elizabethan  and  the  great  Victorian  poets.  There 
never  was  a  poet  who  did  not  admire  Keats. 
Shelley 'sAdonais  is  the  lovely  lament  of  a  brother 
poet  for  his  untimely  death, 

The  bloom  whose  petals,  nipt  before  they  blew, 
Died  on  the  promise  of  the  fruit. 

This  is  the  pathetic  part  of  it.  All  his  work  con- 
stantly growing  in  excellence  throughout  the  short 
period  of  his  poetic  activity,  but  all  finished  before 
he  was  25.  And  when  we  consider  that  much  of  this 
work  is  of  supreme  beauty  we  must  all,  I  think, 
agree  with  the  opinion  expressed  by  Lord  Tennyson 
that  "  had  he  lived  he  would  have  been  a  very 
great  poet  indeed,  the  first  of  us  all." 


WORDSWORTH 

1770-1850 

IN  one  of  his  pleasant  letters  about  the  poets  he  had 
known  Aubrey  de  Vere  writes  :  "I  had  been  en- 
thusiastically praising  Byron's  poetry,  my  father 
calmly  replied,  '  Wordsworth  is  the  great  poet  of 
modern  times.'  Much  surprised  I  asked,  '  And 
what  may  his  special  merits  be  ?  '  The  answer 
was, '  They  are  various,  as  for  instance  depth,  large- 
ness, elevation,  and,  what  is  rare  in  Modern  poetry, 
an  entire  purity ;  in  his  noble  Laodamia  they  are 
chiefly  majesty  and  pathos/  A  few  weeks  after- 
wards I  chanced  to  take  from  the  library  shelves 
a  volume  of  Wordsworth  and  it  opened  on  Lao- 
damia, and  bound  me  to  the  spot  till  I  had  come 
to  the  end.  As  I  read,  a  new  world,  hitherto 
unimagined,  opened  itself  out,  stretching  far  away 
into  serene  infinitude,  ...  I  had  been  translated 
into  another  planet  of  song,  one  with  larger  move- 
ments and  a  longer  year.  A  wider  conception  of 
poetry  had  become  mine,  and  the  Byronian  enthusi- 
asm fell  from  me  like  a  bond  that  is  broken  by 
being  outgrown." 

It  is  this  elevation  and  largeness  which  is  the 
chief  characteristic  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  and 
gives  us  the  feeling  of  reverence  for  the  poet. 

Born  in  1770,  there  was  nothing  very  remarkable 

172 


Word  worth  173 

about  his  youth  and  upbringing.  We  have  his 
own  description  of  his  life  in  the  little  school  at 
Hawkshead  in  the  Lake  district,  and  his  years  at 
St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  and  also  of  his 
travels  abroad  when  he  came  of  age,  and  particu- 
larly of  his  visit  to  Paris,  full  of  ardent  enthusiasm 
for  Liberty,  at  the  time  of  the  French  revolution, 
and  the  change  of  opinion  that  subsequent  events 
inspired. 

He  was  seven  and  twenty  before  he  took  to 
writing  poetry,  as  the  main  business  of  his  life. 
His  travels  over,  he  had  settled  at  last  at  Race- 
down,  near  Crewkerne,  in  Dorset,  with  his  beloved 
sister  Dorothy,  who  never  afterwards  left  him. 
But  in  1797  they  moved  to  Alfoxden,  in  Somerset- 
shire, so  as  to  be  near  his  friend  S.  T.  Coleridge, 
then  living  at  Nether  Stowey.  As  a  result  of 
that  friendship,  in  1798  Wordsworth's  first  volume 
was  published  with  the  title  Lyrical  Ballads,  a 
joint  work  which  included  Coleridge's  Ancient 
Manner.  After  this  they  all  went  abroad  ;  and 
it  is  worth  noting  that,  for  his  time,  Wordsworth 
was  a  great  traveller.  On  December  21,  1799, 
they  settled  in  Grasmere,  as  described  in  The 
Recluse,  first  in  the  humble  little  "  Dove  Cottage," 
once  an  inn  with  the  sign  of  The  Dove  and  Olive 
Leaf,  now  the  property  of  the  nation,  and  still  in 
much  the  same  state  as  when  Wordsworth,  and 
after  him  De  Quincey,  made  it  their  home.  Here 
Wordsworth  lived  till  May  1808,  and  here  almost 
all  of  his  firstrate  work  was  done.  Hither,  in  1802, 
he  brought  his  bride,  and  in  Grasmere  and  the  next 
parish  of  Rydal  he  happily  spent  the  remaining 
fifty  years  of  his  life,  how  happily  his  four  charming 


174  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

sonnets,  called  Personal  Talk,  tell  us,  amid 
"  smooth  passions,  smooth  discourse,  and  joyous 
thought/'  Fortunately  he  had  had  a  little  money 
left  him,  and  their  wants  were  small.  Even  now, 
in  that  delightful  region,  it  is  possible  for  cultivated 
people  to  live  in  the  simplest  way,  and  the  Words- 
worths  were  the  very  embodiment  of  "  plain 
living  and  high  thinking/'  But  good  as  was  his 
work,  Wordsworth  used  to  say  that  for  many 
years  his  poetry  never  brought  him  in  enough  to 
buy  his  shoe-strings,  though  Byron  and  Scott  were 
at  this  time  making  their  thousands.  So  the  £30 
which  the  Bristol  publisher  gave  him  for  his  share 
in  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  and  which  he  never 
recovered,  was  for  a  long  time  the  only  profit 
Wordsworth  made  by  his  verse. 

It  was  at  Cambridge,  and  between  1830  and  1840, 
that  he  attained  his  greatest  popularity.  This  was 
due  in  great  measure  to  the  influence  of  Coleridge, 
though  the  death  of  Byron  in  1824  and  the  fact 
that  Scott  had  given  up  poetry  for  prose  had  in  a 
measure  cleared  the  way  for  him.  By  1842, 
when  Tennyson's  two  volumes  came  out,  Words- 
worth's fame  was  established  ;  but  both  at  the  Uni- 
versities and  elsewhere  the  younger  poet  certainly 
attracted  a  great  part  of  the  poetry-reading  public 
from  Wordsworth  to  himself.  Of  his  contempora- 
ries Coleridge  was  Wordsworth's  chief  friend,  Ten- 
nyson was  a  great  admirer  of  his  poems  and  Words- 
worth was  very  complimentary  about  Tennyson's. 
In  1845,  at  the  time  he  was  appointed  Poet  Lau- 
reate, he  wrote  to  Professor  Reed,  "  I  saw  Tenny- 
son when  I  was  in  London  several  times.  He  is 
decidedly  the  first  of  our  living  poets  and  I  hope 


Wordsworth  175 

he  will  live  to  give  the  world  still  better  things." 
This  was  before  the  publishing  of  In  Memoriam 
or  Maud.  In  expressing  his  hope  that  Tennyson 
might  live,  Wordsworth  doubtless  was  thinking  of 
the  early  death  of  Keats,  Shelley  and  Byron  at  the 
ages  respectively  of  25,  30,  and  36,  not  that  he 
ever  read  much  of  their  works,  nor  did  he  of 
Southey's,  his  predecessor  in  the  Laureateship, 
and  his  friend  and  neighbour.  Scott  he  loved, 
and  Scott  felt  the  worth  of  Wordsworth's  poetry 
which  he  consistently  praised  before  it  had  caught 
the  public  ear  at  all. 

Wordsworth's  school  and  college  days  are  de- 
scribed in  The  Prelude,  a  long  but  interesting  auto- 
biographical poem  extending  to  fourteen  books, 
the  Qth,  10 th,  and  nth  of  which  are  of  special 
value  as  giving  a  description  of  what  he  saw  in 
France  at  the  time  of  the  Great  Revolution  in  1792. 
This  time  was  a  crisis  in  Wordsworth's  life.  He 
went  out  full  of  enthusiasm  for  a  great  nation 
struggling  for  liberty  and  came  back,  after  the 
September  Massacres,  disappointed  and  filled  with 
pain  and  grief,  and  it  was  then  that  the  companion- 
ship of  his  "  dear,  dear  sister  "  the  wonderful 
Dorothy,  and  the  contemplation  of  Nature  among 
the  mountains  of  Westmorland  led  him  back  from 
the  dark  Vale  of  Melancholy  to  the  sunlight,  as  he 
says  in  Book  XI  of  The  Prelude — 

Then  it  was — 

Thanks  to  the  bounteous  Giver  of  all  good  ! — 
That  the  beloved  sister  in  whose  sight 
Those  days  were  passed,  now  speaking  in  a  voice 
Of  sudden  admonition — like  a  brook 
That  did  but  cross  a  lonely  road  and  now 
Is  seen,  heard,  felt,  and  caught  at  every  turn, 


176  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Companion  never  lost  through  many  a  league — 

Maintained  for  me  a  saving  intercourse 

With  my  true  self ;  for  though  bedimmed  and  changed 

Much,  as  it  seemed,  I  was  no  further  changed 

Than  as  a  clouded  and  a  waning  moon. 

She  whispered  still  that  brightness  would  return  ; 

She  in  the  midst  of  all  preserved  me  still 

A  Poet,  made  me  seek  beneath  that  name, 

And  that  alone,  my  office  upon  earth ; 

And,  lastly,  as  hereafter  will  be  shown, 

If  willing  audience  fail  not,  Nature's  self, 

By  all  varieties  of  human  love 

Assisted,  let  me  back  through  opening  day 

To  those  sweet  counsels  between  head  and  heart, 

Whence  grew  that  genuine  knowledge,  fraught  with 

peace, 

Which,  through  the  later  sinkings  of  this  cause, 
Hath  still  upheld  me,  and  upholds  me  now. 

This  "beloved  sister"  was  his  constant  com- 
panion both  before  and  after  his  marriage.  They 
walked  together  all  over  the  Lake  District  and 
through  the  Highlands,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
notice  how  Wordsworth  in  several  of  his  lyrics 
has  reproduced  word  for  word  the  picture  she 
describes  so  well  in  her  delightful  Journals.  She 
was  for  many  years  everything  to  him — 

She  gave  me  eyes,  she  gave  me  ears ; 

And  humble  cares,  and  delicate  fears  ; 

A  heart  the  fountain  of  sweet  tears ; 

And  love,  and  thought,  and  joy. 

And  not  only  did  she  find  eyes  and  ears  for  her 
brother,  but  she  gave  him,  through  all  the  best 
years  of  her  life,  help  in  writing  and  copying,  far 
greater  in  every  way  than  he  could  have  obtained 
from  any  number  of  ordinary  secretaries  or  copy- 
ists, for  was  she  not  his  "  Sister,  slave  and  inspirer." 
The  following  extracts  from  her  Grasmere  Journal 
will  show  what  an  exhausting  effect  composition 


Wordsworth  177 

had  upon  the  poet  and  what  infinite  labour  his 
sister  was  always  ready  to  bestow.  The  time  is 
1801  and  1802  when  Wordsworth  was  at  work  on 
the  early  books  of  The  Excursion,  his  name  for  the 
whole  of  which  before  publication  was  The  Pedlar. 
When  published  the  term  "  Pedlar  "  was  discarded 
for  "  Wanderer/' 

Wednesday,  Dec.  23,  1801.  .  .  .  "  Mary " 
(Mrs.  Wordsworth)  "  wrote  out  the  Tales  from 
Chaucer  for  Coleridge,  William  worked  at  the 
Ruined  Cottage  and  made  himself  very  ill.  ..." 

Tuesday,  Jan.  26,  1802.  "We  sate  till  we 
were  both  tired,  for  William  wrote  out  part  of 
his  poem,  and  endeavoured  to  alter  it,  and  so  made 
himself  ill.  I  copied  out  the  rest  for  him.  .  .  ." 

Monday,  Feb.  I.  "  William  worked  hard  at  the 
Pedlar,  and  tired  himself.  ...  I  baked  bread/1 

Tuesday,  Feb.  2.  "William  worked  at  the 
Pedlar.  .  .  /' 

Thursday,  Feb,  4.  "William  thought  a  little 
about  the  Pedlar/' 

Friday,  Feb.  5.     "  Sat  up  late  at  the  Pedlar." 

Sunday,  Feb.  7.  "  William  had  a  bad  night, 
and  was  working  at  his  poem.  We  sate  by 
the  fire,  and  did  not  walk,  but  read  the  Pedlar, 
thinking  it  done  ;  but  lo  !  W.  could  find  fault 
with  one  part  of  it — it  was  uninteresting,  and 
must  be  altered,  poor  William  !  " 

Wednesday,  Feb.  10.  "  We  read  the  first 
part  of  the  poem  and  were  delighted  with  it,  but 
William  afterwards  got  to  some  ugly  place,  and 
went  to  bed  tired  out.  .  .  ." 

Thursday,  Feb.  n.  "  William  sadly  tired,  and 
working  at  the  Pedlar/' 


178  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Friday,  Feb.  12.  "  I  re-copied  the  Pedlar  ; 
but  poor  William  all  the  time  at  work.  .  .  .  We 
sate  a  long  time  with  the  window  unclosed,  and 
almost  finished  writing  the  Pedlar,  but  poor 
William  wore  himself  out  and  me  with  labour. 
Went  to  bed  at  12  o'clock." 

Saturday,  Feb.  13.  "It  snowed  a  little.  Still 
at^work  at  the  Pedlar,  altering  and  refitting. 
William  read  part  of  his  Recluse  aloud  to  me.'1 

Sunday,  Feb.  14.  "  William  left  me  at  work 
altering  some  passages  of  the  Pedlar,  and  went 
into  the  orchard/' 

Sunday,  Feb.  28.  "  William  very  ill ;  em- 
ployed himself  with  the  Pedlar." 

Friday  Morning.  "...  I  wrote  the  Pedlar 
and  finished  it.  .  .  ." 

The  poem  was  now  laid  aside,  the  first  two 
books  being  finished,  and  was  not  taken  up 
again  until  they  had  moved,  in  1808,  from 
Dove  Cottage  with  its  orchard,  the  scene  of  so 
much  of  his  best  writing,  to  Allan  Bank  on  the 
other  side  of  Grasmere,  a  new  house,  of  which 
Wordsworth  was  the  first  occupant  and  where  he 
was  nearly  driven  wild  by  the  smoky  chimneys. 

It  should  be  noted  that  Wordsworth  was  given 
to  making  up  his  characters  from  what  he  had 
noticed  in  two  or  three  different  persons.  This  is 
true  of  Matthew,  and  of  the  Wanderer  in  The 
Excursion ;  and  Margaret  in  Book  I,  the  poet 
himself  tells  us,  is  composite,  made  of  observa- 
tions in  Somerset  and  Dorset  and  placed  in  Lake 
Country  surroundings.  Even  her  cottage  there 
is  described  as  thatched,  and  in  Spring  the  banks 
are  gay  with  primroses,  while  her  garden  in 


Wordsworth  179 

Summer  is  over-grown  with  thrift  and  bindweed 
while  the  fields  outside  are  clothed  with  wheat ;  all 
this  is  foreign  to  Westmorland,  but  natural  to 
Somerset,  while — 

that  bright  weed 

The  yellow  stonecrop,  suffered  to  take  root 
Along  the  window's  edge, 

is  a  touch  of  pure  Westmoreland,  to  which  Book 
II  introduces  us,  and  the  rest  of  the  poem  keeps 
us  among  the  fells  and  in  the  valleys,  the  two  being 
at  times  mixed  together  so  that  the  lonely  Blea 
Tarn  and  Grasmere  Church,  the  Metropolis  of  the 
district,  are  drawn  into  one  picture.  For  though 
the  poet  took  his  pictures  from  Nature,  he  did  not 
consider  it  necessary  always  to  paint  them  just 
as  he  saw  them. 

The  Prelude  is  the  first  part  and  The  Excursion 
the  second  part  of  what  was  meant  to  be  a  philoso- 
phical poem  called  The  Recluse,  and  which  occupied 
him  from  1795  to  1814.  It  was  intended  to  contain 
his  views  on  Man,  Nature  and  Society,  but  it  was 
never  completed.  It  sounds  dull,  and  much  of  it  is 
rather  dull  reading,  but  it  abounds  with  passages 
which,  if  we  take  Matthew  Arnold's  definition  of 
poetry  as  "  The  perfect  speech  of  man  in  which  he 
comes  nearest  to  being  able  to  utter  the  truth/' 
must  be  called  poetry  of  the  highest  order.  Still, 
it  is  not  in  this,  the  longest  of  his  poems,  that 
Wordsworth's  chief  claim  as  a  poet  and  a  great 
poet  rests.  Rather  is  it  in  his  Laodamia,  or  his 
great  Odes,  in  some  of  his  magnificent  Sonnets,  in 
Tintern  Abbey,  and  still  more  in  some  of  his  Narra- 
tive poems  such  as  Michael,  in  his  lovely  lyrical 


180  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

poems,  notably  The  Solitary  Reaper,  and  in  his 
Reflective  poem  The  Fottntain,  that  we  have 
Wordsworth  at  his  best. 

To  quote  two  or  three,  we  have   in  his  Ode  on 
Intimations  of  Immortality — 

The  Rainbow  comes  and  goes, 

And  lovely  is  the  Rose  ; 

The  Moon  doth  with  delight 
Look  round  her  when  the  heavens  are  bare ; 

Waters  on  a  starry  night 

Are  beautiful  and  fair  ; 
The  sunshine  is  a  glorious  birth  ; 
But  yet  I  know,  where'er  I  go, 
That  there  hath  past  away  a  glory  from  the  earth. 

And  again — 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  ; 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 

Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  cometh  from  afar : 

Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 

And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 

From  God,  who  is  our  home  : 
Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy  ! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  Boy, 
But  He  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy  ; 
The  Youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  East 

Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  Priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended  ; 
At  length  the  Man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

In  The  Fountain — 

Down  to  the  vale  this  water  steers, 

How  merrily  it  goes  ! 
'Twill  murmur  on  a  thousand  years, 

And  flow  as  now  it  flows. 


Wordsworth  181 

And  here,  on  this  delightful  day, 

I  cannot  choose  but  think 
How  oft,  a  vigorous  man,  I  lay 

Beside  this  Fountain's  brink. 

My  eyes  are  dim  with  childish  tears, 

My  heart  is  idly  stirred, 
For  the  same  sound  is  in  my  ears 

Which  in  those  days  I  heard. 

Thus  fares  it  still  in  our  decay : 

And  yet  the  wiser  mind 
Mourns  less  for  what  age  takes  away 

Than  what  it  leaves  behind. 

The  Blackbird  in  the  summer  trees, 

The  Lark  upon  the  hill, 
Let  loose  their  carols  when  they  please, 

Are  quiet  when  they  will. 

With  Nature  never  do  they  wage 

A  foolish  strife  ;  they  see 
A  happy  youth,  and  their  old  age 

Is  beautiful  and  free  : 

But  we  are  pressed  by  heavy  laws ; 

And  often,  glad  no  more, 
We  wear  a  face  of  joy,  because 

We  have  been  glad  of  yore. 


And  among  the  Lyrics — 

I  wandered  lonely  as  a  Cloud 

That  floats  on  high  o'er  vales  and  hills, 
When  all  at  once  I  saw  a  crowd, 

A  host  of  golden  Daffodils  ; 
Beside  the  Lake,  beneath  the  trees, 
Fluttering  and  dancing  in  the  breeze. 

Continuous  as  the  stars  that  shine 
And  twinkle  on  the  milky  way, 

They  stretched  in  never-ending  line 
Along  the  margin  of  a  bay ; 

Ten  thousand  saw  I  at  a  glance, 

Tossing  their  heads  in  sprightly  dance. 


1 82  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

The  waves  beside  them  danced,  but  they 
Out-did  the  sparkling  waves  in  glee  : — 

A  poet  could  not  but  be  gay, 
In  such  a  jocund  company  ; 

I  gazed — and  gazed — but  little  thought 

What  wealth  the  show  to  me  had  brought : 

For  oft,  when  on  my  couch  I  lie 
In  vacant  or  in  pensive  mood, 

They  flash  upon  that  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude, 

And  then  my  heart  with  pleasure  fills, 

And  dances  with  the  Daffodils. 

The  beautiful  lines  about  his  wife — 

She  was  a  Phantom  of  delight 

When  first  she  gleamed  upon  my  sight ; 

A  lovely  Apparition,  sent 

To  be  a  moment's  ornament ; 

Her  eyes  are  stars  of  Twilight  fair  ; 

Like  Twilight's,  too,  her  dusky  hair  ; 

But  all  things  else  about  her  drawn 

From  May-time  and  the  cheerful  Dawn  ; 

A  dancing  Shape,  an  Image  gay, 

To  haunt,  to  startle,  and  waylay. 

I  saw  her  upon  nearer  view, 

A  Spirit,  yet  a  Woman  too  ! 

Her  household  motions  light  and  free, 

And  steps  of  virgin  liberty  ; 

Sweet  records,  promises  as  sweet  ; 

A  Creature  not  too  bright  or  good 

For  human  nature's  daily  food  ; 

For  transient  sorrows,  simple  wiles, 

Praise,  blame,  love,  kisses,  tears,  and  smiles. 

And  now  I  see  with  eye  serene 
The  very  pulse  of  the  machine  ; 
A  Being  breathing  thoughtful  breath, 
A  Traveller  between  life  and  death  ; 
The  reason  firm,  the  temperate  will, 
Endurance,  foresight,  strength,  and  skill ; 
A  perfect  Woman,  nobly  planned, 
To  warn,  to  comfort,  and  command, 
And  yet  a  Spirit  still,  and  bright 
With  something  of  an  angel  light. 


Wordsworth  183 

And  The  Solitary  Reaper,  sometimes  called  The 
Highland  Lass — 

Behold  her,  single  in  the  field. 
Yon  solitary  Highland  Lass  ! 
Reaping  and  singing  by  herself  ; 
Stop  here,  or  gently  pass  ! 
Alone  she  cuts  and  binds  the  grain, 
And  sings  a  melancholy  strain ; 
O  listen  !  for  the  Vale  profound 
Is  overflowing  with  the  sound. 

No  Nightingale  did  ever  chant 

So  sweetly  to  reposing  bands 

Of  Travellers  in  some  shady  haunt, 

Among  Arabian  Sands : 

A  voice  so  thrilling  ne'er  was  heard 

In  spring-time  from  the  Cuckoo-bird, 

Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 

Among  the  farthest  Hebrides. 

Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings  ? 

Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 

For  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things, 

And  battles  long  ago  : 

Or  is  it  some  more  humble  lay, 

Familiar  matter  of  to-day  ? 

Some  natural  sorrow,  loss,  or  pain, 

That  has  been,  and  may  be  again  ! 

Whate'er  the  theme,  the  Maiden  sang 
As  if  her  song  could  have  no  ending ; 
I  saw  her  singing  at  her  work, 
And  o'er  the  sickle  bending ; — 
I  listened  till  I  had  my  fill, 
And  when  I  mounted  up  the  hill, 
The  music  in  my  heart  I  bore, 
Long  after  it  was  heard  no  more. 

Of  The  Sonnets  several  are  of  the  very  highest 
order.  Some,  like  that  to  Wans  fell,  appeal  only  to 
those  who  know  the  spot,  but  to  them  few  can 
appeal  more  strongly. 

Of  the  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  one  called  Per- 
suasion is  remarkable. 


184  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Man's  life  is  like  a  sparrow,  mighty  king  ! 
That— while  at  banquet  with  your  chiefs  you  sit 
Housed  near  a  blazing  fire — is  seen  to  flit 
Safe  from  the  wintry  tempest.     Fluttering 
Here  did  it  enter  ;  there  on  hasty  wing, 
Flies  out,  and  passes  on  from  cold  to  cold  ;  | 
But  whence  it  came  we  know  not,  nor  behold 
Whither  it  goes.     Even  such  that  transient  Thing, 
The  human  Soul ;  not  utterly  unknown 
While  in  the  Body  lodged,  her  warm  abode  ; 
But  from  what  world  She  came,  what  woe  or  weal 
On  her  departure  waits,  no  tongue  hath  shown  ; 
This  mystery  if  the  Stranger  can  reveal, 
His  be  a  welcome  cordially  bestowed. 

Among  the  best  of  all  we  should  certainly  number 
that  On  the  Extinction  of  the  Venetian  Republic — 

Once  did  She  hold  the  gorgeous  East  in  fee  ; 

And  was  the  safeguard  of  the  West :    the  worth 

Of  Venice  did  not  fall  below  her  birth, 

Venice,  the  eldest  Child  of  Liberty. 

She  was  a  Maiden  City,  bright  and  free  ; 

No  guile  seduced,  no  force  could  violate  ; 

And  when  She  took  unto  herself  a  Mate, 

She  must  espouse  the  everlasting  Sea. 

And  what  if  she  had  seen  those  glories  fade, 

Those  titles  vanish,  and  that  strength  decay  ; 

Yet  shall  some  tribute  of  regret  be  paid 

When  her  long  life  hath  reached  its  final  day  ; 

Men  are  we,  and  must  grieve  when  even  the  Shade 

Of  that  which  once  was  great,  is  passed  away. 

And  that  Composed  upon  the  beach  near  Calais- 
It  is  a  beauteous  Evening,  calm  and  free  ; 
The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  Nun 
Breathless  with  adoration  ;  the  broad  sun 
Is  sinking  down  in  its  tranquillity  ; 
The  gentleness  of  heaven  is  on  the  sea  ! 
Listen  !  the  mighty  Being  is  awake, 
And  doth  with  his  eternal  motion  make 
A  sound  like  thunder — everlastingly. 
Dear  Child  1  dear  Girl  !  that  walkest  with  me  here, 
If  thou  appear'st  untouched  by  solemn  thought, 
Thy  nature  is  not  therefore  less  divine  : 


Wordsworth  185 

Thou  liest  in  Abraham's  bosom  all  the  year  ; 
And  worshipp'st  at  the  Temple's  inner  shrine, 
God  being  with  thee  when  we  know  it  not. 

And  Upon  Westminster  Bridge — 

Earth  has  not  anything  to  show  more  fair  ; 
Dull  would  he  be  of  soul  who  could  pass  by 
A  sight  so  touching  in  its  majesty  : 
This  City  now  doth  like  a  garment  wear 
The  beauty  of  the  morning  ;  silent,  bare, 
Ships,  towers,  domes,  theatres,  and  temples  lie 
Open  unto  the  fields,  and  to  the  sky  ; 
All  bright  and  glittering  in  the  smokeless  air. 
Never  did  sun  more  beautifully  steep 
In  his  first  splendour  valley,  rock,  or  hill ; 
Ne'er  saw  I,  never  felt,  a  calm  so  deep  ! 
The  river  glideth  at  his  own  sweet  will : 
Dear  God  !  the  very  houses  seem  asleep  ; 
And  all  that  mighty  heart  is  lying  still  ! 

All  those  were  written  in  1802,  and  they  can  only 
be  surpassed  by  that  magnificent  one  of  1806 — 

The  world  is  too  much  with  us  ;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers  : 
Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours  ; 
We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon  ! 
This  Sea  that  bares  her  bosom  to  the  moon  ; 
The  winds  that  will  be  howling  at  all  hours, 
And  are  up-gathered  now  like  sleeping  flowers  ; 
For  this,  for  every  thing,  we  are  out  of  tune  ; 
It  moves  us  not. — Great  God  !  I'd  rather  be 
A  Pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 
So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 
Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn  ; 
Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea  ; 
Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn. 

The  last  line  has  a  reference  to  Spenser's  lines  in 
Colin  Clout's  come  home  again. 

Of  them  the  Shepherd  which  hath  charge  in  chief 
Is  Triton  blowing  loud  his  wreathed  horn. 


i86  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

All  this  is  of  the  highest  quality  and  Wordsworth 
has  written  much,  if  not  quite  as  good,  still  of  very 
great  excellence,  while  in  many  poems  which  are 
not  by  any  means  his  best,  we  find  imbedded  such 
fine  passages  as — 

Brooding  above  the  fierce  confederate  storms 
Of  sorrow,  barricadoed  evermore 
Within  the  walls  of  cities. 

From  The  Recluse. 

Or  again,  on  Newton's  statue  in  Trinity  Chapel, 
Cambridge — 

The  marble  index  of  a  mind  for  ever 

Voyaging  through  strange  seas  of  thought  alone  ; — 

and  lines  of  such  gentle  pathos  as — 

And  she  forgotten  in  the  quiet  grave. 

Ex.  I.  514. 

Or 

While  Man  grows  old,  and  dwindles  or  decays ; 
And  countless  generations  of  Mankind 
Depart ;  and  leave  no  vestige  where  they  trod. 

Ex.  IV.  762. 

And  in  all  his  writings  he  excels  in  his  descriptions 
of  Nature,  as  when  he  speaks  of — 

The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 
The  sleep  that  is  among  the,  lonely  hills. 

Brougham  Castle. 

Wordsworth  from  his  earliest  years  was  strongly 
influenced  by  his  natural  surroundings.  Mountains, 
streams  and  lakes  were  all  taken  into  his  heart 
and  reproduced  over  and  over  again  in  his  poems 
which  reflect  at  one  time  the  great  beauty  of  lake 


Wordsworth  187 

and  vale,  at  another  the  majesty  and  solemnity 
of  the  everlasting  hills. 

And  O,  ye  Fountains,  Meadows,  Hills,  and  Groves, 

Think  not  of  any  severing  of  our  loves ! 

Yet  in  my  heart  of  hearts  I  feel  your  might ; 

and  while  the  smaller  things  of  the  landscape, 
"Rocks  and  stones  and  trees"  and  mountain 
mists  are  noted  and  described  in  some  charming 
lyric  full  of  the  joy  of  life,  in  his  Verses  To  May 
he  has 

Lo  !  streams  that  April  could  not  check 

Are  patient  of  thy  rule ; 
Gurgling  in  foamy  water-break, 

Loitering  in  glassy  pool ; 
By  thee,  thee  only,  could  be  sent 

Such  gentle  mists  as  glide, 
Curling  with  unconfirmed  intent, 

On  that  green  mountain's  side. 

The  voices  of  the  heights  and  the  tempests  are 
reproduced  in  lofty  or  solemn  lines  full  of  deep 
thought  and  feeling  in  which  the  poet  speaks  his 
message  to  mankind. 

The  cataracts  blow  their  trumpets  from  the  steep ; 
I  hear  the  echoes  through  the  mountains  throng, 
The  winds  come  to  me  from  the  fields  of  sleep. 

And  as  in  Nature  so  with  humanity  Wordsworth 
notices  arid  gives  the  full  value  to  the  small  actions 
of  which  life  is  mainly  composed. 

To  "  that  best  portion  of  a  good  man's  life, 
His  little,  nameless,  unremembered  acts 
Of  kindness  and  of  love." 

I  have  not  dwelt  on  the  simplicity  of  Words- 
worth's language,  it  is  evident  to  all ;  and  to  both 


i88  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Wordsworth  and  Burns  our  thanks  are  due  more 
than  to  any  others  for  re-introducing  that  simple 
language  into  poetry  which  since  Chaucer's  time 
had  been  less  and  less  in  vogue.  They  both  of 
them  also  exhibit  a  remarkable  insight  into  the 
dignity  of  common  speech  and  common  things. 

Concerning  his  style  we  may  say  that  Words- 
worth had  no  special  style  of  his  own  ;  of  course  he 
had  studied  the  great  poets  too  well  not  to  catch 
something  of  it  from  them,  and  his  poetic  power 
of  describing  in  the  simplest  words  some  scene, 
action,  or  thought,  with  absolute  fidelity  and  often 
with  the  finest  pathos  is  peculiarly  his  own  or 
shared  with  Burns  alone,  for  instance  in  the  Solitary 
Reaper. 


and 


Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides, 


For  old  unhappy  far-off  things 
And  battles  long  ago  ; 


or  again  the  line  in  Michael — 

And  never  lifted  up  a  single  stone  : 

these  are  among  Wordsworth's  most  characteris- 
tic forms  of  expression.  No  words  could  be  simpler, 
but  read  the  lines  with  their  context,  and  then 
how  fine  they  are  !  how  sonorous  !  how  pathetic  ! 
and  besides  the  pathos  his  lines  have  to  a  remark- 
able degree  the  power  of  making  the  reader  reflect, 
and  of  raising  him  out  of  himself  to  a  higher  plane, 
where,  as  it  was  with  Aubrey  de  Vere,  "  A  New 
World  opens  itself  out  before  him,  stretching  far 


Wordsworth  189 

away  into  serene  infinitude/'  This  is  the  elevation  I 
spoke  of  as  characteristic  of  Wordsworth's  poetry. 
For  a  good  instance  of  what  I  mean  let  us  turn  to 
the  lines  composed  a  few  miles  above  Tintern 
Abbey  in  1798,  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  best 
decade.  They  describe  his  feeling  for  Nature  as  a 
youth  and  again  as  a  man. 

The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion  :  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite ;  a  feeling  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm, 
By  thought  supplied,  or  any  interest 
Unborrowed  from  the  eye. — That  time  is  past, 
And  all  its  aching  joys  are  now  no  more, 
And  all  its  dizzy  raptures.     Not  for  this 
Faint  I,  nor  mourn  nor  murmur ;  other  gifts 
Have  followed,  for  such  loss,  I  would  believe, 
Abundant  recompense.     For  I  have  learned 
To  look  on  nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  youth  ;  but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue.     And  I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts  :  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  : 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things.     Therefore  am  I  still 
A  lover  of  the  meadows  and  the  woods, 
And  mountains ;  and  of  all  that  we  behold 
From  this  green  earth ;  of  all  the  mighty  world 
Of  eye  and  ear,  both  what  they  half  create, 
And  what  perceive ;  well  pleased  to  recognize 
In  nature  and  the  language  of  the  sense, 
The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse, 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being. 


I  go  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

But  it  is  not  only  for  the  elevation  or  for  the  unique 
beauty  of  many  of  his  poems  that  we  rank  Words- 
worth so  high  ;  oftener  it  is  for  the  extraordinary 
power  that  he  has  of  feeling  the  joy  in  Nature  and 
in  the  simple  affections  and  duties  of  human  life, 
and  the  equally  remarkable  power  he  has  of  ex- 
pressing it  to  us  and  making  us  all  feel  it  too.  He 
wrote,  as  Keats  wished  to  write,  on  human  life, 
that  is  to  say  on  How  to  live  ;  other  poets  have 
addressed  themselves  to  this  great  topic,  but 
"  Wordsworth's  superiority/'  says  Mr.  Arnold, 
"  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  deals  with  more  of  life 
than  they  do  ;  and  deals  with  life  as  a  whole  more 
powerfully." 

We  are  not  suggesting  that  Wordsworth's 
poems  are  all  on  the  same  high  level.  It  may 
well  be  true,  as  has  been  said  of  him  by  a 
good  judge,  that  he  would  have  been  greater  if 
he  had  written  only  half  as  much,  and  it  is  almost 
amazing  that  a  poet  who  when  inspired  could  be  so 
great,  should  when  the  inspiration  left  him  be 
able  and  apparently  content  to  write  so  weakly, 
or  with  such  ponderosity.  But  allowing  all  this, 
still  even  the  lengthy  Excursion,  in  which  occur 
such  prosy  lines  as  "  perhaps  it  is  not  he  but 
some  one  else,"  is  full  of  interest  and  full  also  of 
magnificent  passages  both  melodious  and  profound, 
and — what  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  most  insists  on — 
"  he  has  left  us  so  large  a  body  of  poetry,  much  of 
it  of  the  highest  order,  that  though  Gray  or  Burns 
or  Keats  may  all  have  written  single  poems  of 
equal,  or  some  might  think  greater,  merit — the 
very  quantity  of  good  work  left  by  Wordsworth, 
when  you  have  cleared  away  the  poetical  baggage 


Wordsworth  191 

that  encumbers  him,  is  so  ample,  that  it  is  by  the 
great  body  of  powerful  and  significant  work  which 
remains  to  him  after  every  reduction  and  deduc- 
tion has  been  made,  that  Wordsworth's  superiority 
is  proved.  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Moliere  and  Mil- 
ton and  even  Goethe  are  altogether  larger  and 
more  splendid  luminaries  in  the  poetical  heaven 
than  Wordsworth,  but  I  know  not  where  else 
among  the  moderns  we  are  to  find  his  superior." l 
For  all  this  Wordsworth  is  not  popular ;  the 
thoughtful  readers  of  English  poetry  can  have  no 
doubt  of  his  greatness,  but  the  number  of  thought- 
ful readers  is  not  as  large  as  it  should  be.  It  is  easy 
to  say  that  Wordsworth's  poems  are  too  prosy,  too 
didactic,  or  too  philosophical ;  but  how  few  of 
those  who  say  these  things  have  really  studied  him 
and  qualified  themselves  to  pass  an  opinion. 

From  what  we  have  said  it  is  clear  that  it  is  a 
wise  plan  on  the  part  of  those  who  wish  to  help 
forward  the  study  of  Wordsworth,  to  make  a 
selection  of  his  poems,  indeed  no  poet  profits 
more  from  this.  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  has  lately 
brought  out  a  somewhat  large  volume  of  selections, 
admirably  chosen  and  prefaced  by  a  valuable  in- 
troduction ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  surpass  the  little 
book  of  Golden  Treasury  size  brought  out  more 
than  thirty  years  ago  by  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  in 
which  the  selected  poems  are  prefaced  by  a  critical 
essay  written  with  the  fullest  knowledge,  which 
can  be  unreservedly  commended  to  Wordsworth 
students.  In  the  essay  Arnold  expresses  his 
opinion  that  Wordsworth's  own  division  of  his 
poems  into  poems  of  the  fancy,  poems  of  the  ima- 
*  Preface  to  Poems  of  Wordsworth,  M.  Arnold. 


1 92  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

gination,  poems  of  sentiment  and  reflexion,  etc., 
is  unsatisfactory  and  difficult,  and  has  not  the 
self-evident  propriety  of  the  old  Greek  classification 
into  Epic,  Dramatic,  Lyric,  etc.,  and  certainly  the 
author's  own  grouping  is  needlessly  repellent. 
A  chronological  grouping  is  often  used  now  which 
is  better,  and  gives  the  student  information  which  is 
of  value.  For  his  work  is  his  life,  he  lived  as  he 
wrote,  and  those  who  get  to  know  his  works  know 
also  how  much  they  get  from  them  and,  comparing 
him  with  all  the  previous  English  poets,  they  will 
be  ready  to  endorse  Mr.  Arnold's  opinion  when  he 
says — 

"  Chaucer  is  anterior  ;  and  on  other  grounds, 
too,  he  cannot  well  be  brought  into  the  compari- 
son. But  taking  the  roll  of  our  chief  poetical 
names,  besides  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  from 
the  age  of  Elizabeth  downwards,  and  going 
through  it  —  Spenser,  Dryden,  Pope,  Gray,  Gold- 
smith, Cowper,  Burns,  Coleridge,  Campbell,  Moore, 
Byron,  Shelley,  Keats  (I  mention  those  only  who 
are  dead) — I  think  it  certain  that  Wordsworth's 
name  deserves  to  stand,  and  will  finally  stand, 
above  them  all." 

To  this  we  will  only  add  Wordsworth's  own 
feeling  about  his  works,  viz.,  that  "  they  will  co- 
operate with  the  benign  tendencies  in  human 
nature  and  society,  and  will  in  their  degree  be 
efficacious  in  making  men  wiser,  better  and 
happier." 

NOTE 

The  following  remarks  on  the  rustic  figures  in 
Wordsworth's  poems  have  been  communicated  to 


Wordsworth  193 

me  by  a  literary  friend  in  Rydal,  Mrs.  A.  M.  Harris, 
and  I  gladly  avail  myself  of  her  permission  to  print 
them  ;  for  though  much  has  been  written  of  Words- 
worth's poetry  in  relation  to  Nature,  little  has  been 
said  of  the  characteristic  human  figures  to  which  his 
hills  and  vales  form  the  appropriate  background. 

The  "  statesmen  "  or  yeoman  farmers  of  the  West- 
moreland and  Cumberland  dales  were  rapidly  dying 
out  in  Wordsworth's  time,  and  very  pathetic  were  the 
struggles  they  made  to  keep  their  little  holdings  and 
their  independence,  both  of  them  to  be  at  last  given 
up  from  stress  of  circumstances,  for  they  seldom  had 
sufficient  capital  to  tide  over  two  or  three  consecutive 
bad  seasons.  A  few  of  these  "  statesmen "  still 
remain,  and,  go  where  you  will,  all  the  world  over, 
finer  men  or  grander  characters  can  nowhere  be  found 
or  women  better-looking  and  more  capable  ;  a  fact 
which  only  makes  one  more  deeply  regret  their  dis- 
appearance in  many  cases  from  the  district  alto- 
gether. The  labourers  and  shepherds  and  others  are, 
however,  still  there  just  as  in  Wordsworth's  days  and 
are  all  embraced  in  the  term  "  Dalesmen." 


"In  Wordsworth's  poetry,  which  seems  to  pre- 
sent to  us  at  first  sight  only  vast  spaces  of  wild 
inanimate  Nature,  gradually  the  human  interest 
reveals  itself.  Figures  unassuming  and  unadorned 
take  their  quiet  place  in  a  fitting  foreground.  No 
rattle  of  armour,  no  twang  of  the  lute,  no  glitter 
of  spears,  no  waving  of  plumes  herald  their  arrival. 
We  become  aware  of  them  ;  that  is  all.  As  the 
rocks  detach  themselves  from  the  hillside  on  which 
they  lie  scattered,  as  the  sheep  become  distinct 
to  our  perception  from  the  stones  which  they  so 
much  resemble,  so  these  men  of  the  dales  are  re- 

o 


194  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

vealed  as  an  integral  part  of  the  scene  we  look  upon. 
And  man,  as  so  revealed  to  us,  is  little  indeed  ;  a 
pigmy  in  a  giant  world  of  rocks  and  streams  clad 
in  garments  which  assimilate  themselves  to  the 
materials  among  which  he  works — earth-coloured, 
sober-hued — he  toils  through  the  seasons  and  faces 
the  tempests  undisturbed  by  any  but  the  simplest 
ambitions  and  the  most  primitive  emotions  :  yet, 
even  so,  devoid  of  ornament  and  stripped  of  ro- 
mantic accessories,  he  is  grand  in  his  simplicity. 
Like  the  figures  in  the  painter  Millet's  scenes  of 
daily  toil,  Wordsworth's  peasants  represent  for 
us  the  still  sad  music  of  humanity,  its  littleness  and 
the  immensities  surrounding  it,  its  privations,  its 
toil,  its  solitude,  but  never  its  insignificance.  The 
pigmy  among  the  giants  is  touched  with  the  divine 
fire  of  consciousness,  is  lifted  up  and  separated  from 
ignoble  things,  by  stedfast  courage  and  patient 
endurance,  by  love  and  by  constancy. 

Beaten  down  by  suffering,  unvisited  by  any 
radiant  hope,  yet  seldom  complaining  and  fre- 
quently contented,  Wordsworth's  dalesmen  accept 
life  at  the  hands  of  God  with  heads  bowed  in  rever- 
ent acquiescence  and  hands  ready-  to  toil  to  the 
end.  Michael  at  the  sheepfold,  The  Angler  by 
Grasmere  Lake,  The  Schoolmaster,  Matthew,  the 
afflicted  Margaret,  and  last  but  not  least  the  Leech- 
gatherer  by  the  lonely  pool,  vindicate  the  dignity 
of  humanity  in  the  lowly  ways  of  life.  The  Poet 
so  treats  them  that  it  is  easy  to  link  them  in  our 
minds  as  he  did  the  leech-gatherer,  with  the 
memory  of  great  dead  poets.  In  dealing  with 
these  simple  lives  Wordsworth  rises  to  great  heights 
of  poetry.  From  The  Leech- gatherer  we  garner  the 


Wordsworth  195 

"  mighty  poets  in  their  misery  dead  "  and  the 
whole  wonderful  meditation  on  genius  and  human 
life. 

From  The  Angler  we  have — 

The  Lady  of  the  Mere 
Sole  sitting  by  the  shore  of  old  romance. 

From  Matthew — 

She  seemed  as  happy  as  a  wave 
That  dances  on  the  sea. 

From  Margaret — 

'Tis  falsely  said 

That  there  was  ever  intercourse 
Between  the  living  and  the  dead, 
For  surely  then  I  should  have  sight 
Of  him  I  wait  for  day  and  night, 
With  love  and  longings  infinite. 

which  is  a  kind  of  compendium  of  In  Memoriam. 
Add  to  these  the  entrancing  picture  of  the  "  High- 
land Girl"  in  "The  Solitary  Reaper/'  to  which 
we  owe  the  lines — 


and 


Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides  ; 


Old  unhappy  far-off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago. 


Lines  which  breathe  the  very  spirit — the  mystic, 
incommunicable,  unexplainable  spirit — of  poetry  ; 
and  which  are  instinct  with  that  magical  harmony 
of  which  Keats  and  Coleridge  are  the  most  perfect 
modern  exponents. " 


LONGFELLOW 

1807-1882 

WHEN  the  Mayflower  pinnace  discharged  its  cargo 
of  sturdy  Puritans  at  Cape  Cod  in  1620,  Shake- 
speare had  been  dead  but  four  years  and  Milton  was 
a  boy  of  12.  Among  these  Puritans  was  one  John 
Alden  and  a  Yorkshire  lass  called  Priscilla  Mullens. 
Their  story  is  told  in  Longfellow's  poem,  The 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish.  One  hundred  and 
fifty  years  later  a  descendant  of  these  two  was 
living  in  Portland,  Maine,  one  General  Peleg 
Wadsworth,  and  his  eldest  daughter  Zilpah,  one 
of  eleven,  became  the  mother  of  Henry  Wadsworth 
Longfellow.  Her  husband,  Stephen  Longfellow, 
was  a  barrister  whose  ancestor  five  generations 
back  had  emigrated  from  Yorkshire  and  settled  in 
Newbury,  Massachusetts.  So  on  both  sides  Long- 
fellow had  Yorkshire  blood  in  his  veins.  He  was 
the  second  son  and  was  born  at  Portland,  February 
27,  1807,  just  over  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  two 
years  before  the  birth  of  Alfred  Tennyson.  From 
his  earliest  days,  he  was  fond  of  reading,  his  favour- 
ite book  being  Washington  Irving's  Sketchbook. 
In  later  life  he  wrote,  "  The  old  fascination  remains 
about  it,  and  whenever  I  open  its  pages  I  open  also 
that  mysterious  door  which  leads  back  into  the 
haunted  chambers  of  youth/'  As  a  boy,  twice 

196 


Longfellow  197 

every  Sunday  he  went  to  the  Unitarian  Church, 
carrying  in  winter  his  mother's  foot-stove,  in  sum- 
mer her  nosegay.  His  first  attempt  at  verse  was 
"  to  order,"  when  he  was  nine.  The  school- 
teacher said,  "  You  can  write  words,  can't  you  ?  " 
"  Yes."  "  You  can  put  them  together  ?  "  "  Yes." 
"  Then  take  your  slate,  go  out  behind  the  school- 
house,  look  about  you  and  write  me  something 
about  what  you  see.  That  will  be  a  composition." 
He  went  out  and  saw  a  fine  turnip  growing  by  the 
barn,  and  within  the  prescribed  half-hour  he  took 
his  master  a  few  verses  on  it.  His  first  published 
verses  were  on  an  heroic  encounter  between  the 
Whites  and  the  Indians.  For  he  wrote  sixteen 
lines  called  The  Battle  of  Lovell's  Pond  and  sent 
them  to  the  Portland  Argus,  but  as  they  did  not 
appear  he  boldly  went  and  asked  the  Editor  to 
return  him  the  MS.  and  sent  it  to  the  rival  paper 
The  Gazette,  and  they  came  out  on  November  17, 
1820,  when  the  boy  was  13  years  old. 

From  Portland  Academy  he  went  with  his  brother 
Stephen  to  Bowdoin  College  at  Brunswick,  Maine, 
where  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  (then  spelt  Hathorne) 
was  also  a  student.  All  things  in  America  were 
in  their  infancy  then,  whence  it  came  about  that 
one  of  the  Trustees  being  charmed  by  the  lad's 
translation  of  a  bit  from  the  Latin  poet  Horace, 
recommended  him  for  the  proposed  Chair  of  Modern 
Languages  !  This  was  soon  after  he  had  taken  his 
degree  in  1825.  Next  year  he  started  on  a  three 
years'  tour  to  Europe,  to  study  modern  languages 
and  literature  in  France,  Spain,  Italy  and  Germany, 
and  his  industry  is  attested  by  the  excellence  of  his 
translations  from  the  Italian,  Spanish, and  German. 


198  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

In  1831  he  married  Mary  Storer  Potter,  of  Port- 
land. The  success  of  his  book  called  Outre  Mers, 
an  account  of  his  pilgrimage  beyond  the  sea,  pub- 
lished in  1833,  was  such  that  in  1834  ^e  was  made 
Smith  Professor  of  Modern  Languages  at  Harvard, 
to  succeed  Ticknor,  with  a  salary  of  1,500  dollars, 
in  consequence  of  which  next  year  he  again  visited 
Europe,  this  time  with  his  wife.  He  went  to 
London,  Sweden,  where  he  learnt  Finnish,  Den- 
mark, Holland  and  Switzerland.  In  Holland  his 
wife  died.  He  has  some  feeling  verses  on  her  in  his 
short  poem,  Footsteps  of  Angels,  and  he  speaks  of 
this  and  all  his  grief,  and  also  of  the  new  light  which 
came  into  his  life  when  he  met  Miss  Appleton  eight 
months  later,  in  his  book  Hyperion,  which  is  largely 
autobiographical.  In  1839,  *ne  Year  °f  n^s  pub- 
lishing Hyperion,  he  began  to  write  poetry  as  the 
vocation  of  his  life.  In  1842  he  made  a  third  visit 
to  Europe,  chiefly  to  England  and  Germany,  and 
on  his  return  in  1843  he  married  Frances  Elizabeth 
Appleton  as  his  second  wife,  by  whom  he  had  two 
sons  and  two  daughters.  She  was  burnt  to  death 
in  1861  from  a  drop  of  burning  wax  falling  on. her 
dress  whilst  she  was  making  some  seals  to  amuse 
her  children. 

In  1848  his  daughter  Fanny,  aged  5,  died  ;  his 
father  in  1849,  ms  mother  in  1851.  In  1859, 
having  an  assured  income  from  his  writing,  he 
resigned  the  Harvard  professorship. 

In  1868  he  again  came  to  England  and  had  an 
interview  with  the  Queen.  Tennyson  told  me  how 
he  had  had  a  visit  from  him  and  found  him  a  most 
pleasant  good  fellow  "  but  "  (he  added)  "  of  course 
not  a  great  poet." 


Longfellow  199 

In  1882,  March  24,  he  died  at  Cambridge,  Massa- 
chusetts, at  the  age  of  75.  His  lucky  election  to 
the  Chair  of  Modern  Languages  at  Bowdoin  really 
decided  his  career  as  a  literary  man.  His  father 
wanted  him  to  be  a  lawyer.  He  himself  rather 
inclined  to  farming  and  at  17  he  writes  to  his 
father  :  "In  thinking  to  make  a  lawyer  of  me,  I 
think  you  thought  more  partially  than  justly. 
I  do  not  for  my  own  part  imagine  that  such  a 
coat  would  suit  me.  I  hardly  think  that  nature 
designed  me  for  the  bar,  or  the  pulpit,  or  the  dis- 
secting-room. I  am  altogether  in  favour  of  the 
farmer's  life.  Do  keep  the  farmer's  boots  for  me." 
A  few  months  later  he  wrote,  "  The  fact  is,  I  most 
eagerly  aspire  after  eminence  in  literature,"  a 
fortnight  later,  "  of  Divinity,  medicine  and  law  I 
should  choose  the  last.  Whatever  I  do  study 
ought  to  be  engaged  in  with  all  my  soul  for  I  will 
be  eminent  in  something/' 

His  name  is  bound  up  with  Hiawatha,  of  which 
100,000  copies  were  sold  in  two  years.  He  wrote 
a  good  deal  of  poetry,  and  in  spite  of  the  hexameter 
metre  which  is  not  quite  suited  to  the  English 
language  and  of  which  he  is  not  a  consummate 
master,  his  longest  poem,  Evangeline,  is  his  great- 
est work.  It  is  full  of  feeling  and  can  be  read  with 
interest  throughout.  Miles  Standish  is  in  the 
same  metre. 

The  closing  lines  of  Evangeline  will  serve  as  a 
sample  of  Longfellow's  hexameters — 

Still  stands  the  forest  primeval ;    but  far  away  from  its 

shadow 
Side  by  side,  in  their  nameless   graves,   the  lovers  are 

sleeping. 


20O  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Under  the  humble  walls  of  the  little  Catholic  churchyard, 
In  the  heart  of  the  city,  they  lie,  unknown  and  unnoticed. 
Daily  the  tides  of  life  go  ebbing  and  flowing  beside  them, 
Thousands  of  throbbing  hearts,  where  theirs  are  at  rest 

and  for  ever, 
Thousands  of  aching  brains,  where  theirs  are  no  longer 

busy, 
Thousands  of  toiling  hands,  where  theirs  have  ceased  from 

their  labours, 
Thousands  of  weary  feet,  where  theirs  have  completed 

their  journey. 

Another  pretty  specimen  of  the  metre  is  the 
following — 

Ships  that  pass  in  the  night  and  speak  each  other  in  pass- 
ing, 

Only  a  signal  shown,  and  a  distant  voice  in  the  darkness, 
So  on  the  ocean  of  life  we  pass  and  speak  one  another — 
Only  a  look  and  a  voice,  then  darkness  again  and  a  silence. 

But  he  was  happiest  in  his  little  well  known  bits 
like  The  Village  Blacksmith  and  The  Psalm  of  Life 
and  in  The  Slave's  Dream  with  its  splendid  run 
and  wonderful  pathos. 

He  has  some  exceptionally  fine  lines  in  many  of 
his  sonnets,  notably  the  poem  called  The  Two 
Rivers ;  and  the  following  which  is  called  Nature 
seems  to  me  to  be  one  of  the  great  sonnets  of  the 
world's  literature. 

NATURE 

As  a  fond  mother,  when  the  day  is  o'er, 

Leads  by  the  hand  her  little  child  to  bed, 

Half  willing,  half  reluctant  to  be  led, 

And  leave  his  broken  playthings  on  the  floor. 

Still  gazing  at  them  through  the  open  door, 

Nor  wholly  reassured  and  comforted 

By  promises  of  others  in  their  stead 

Which  though  more  splendid  may  not  please  him  more ; 

So  Nature  deals  with  us  and  takes  away 

Our  playthings  one  by  one,  and  by  the  hand 


Longfellow  201 

Leads  us  to  rest  so  gently,  that  we  go, 

Scarce  knowing  if  we  wished  to  go  or  stay, 

Being  too  full  of  sleep  to  understand 

How  far  the  unknown  transcends  the  what  we  know. 

The  metre  and  the  style  of  Hiawatha  he  copied 
from  the  Finnish  Epic  Kalevala,  it  is  in  unrhymed 
trochaics,  four  trochees  to  a  line. 

The  secret  of  his  great  success  as  a  poet  in 
America  is  that  he  wrote  for  the  people.  In  Eng- 
land his  poems  attract  the  young,  and  his  mission 
in  America  where  all  was  young,  was  to  give  a 
nation  of  children  a  taste  for  poetry. 

The  life  of  the  early  settlers  was  very  narrow, 
and  their  lines  of  thought  ran  in  a  severe  groove, 
but  it  was  by  books  that  they  could  connect  them- 
selves with  the  poetic  and  historic  past,  and  books 
they  were  ready  to  devour.  Thus  a  poetry  which 
was  simple,  direct  and  human,  full  of  the  plain 
and  strenuous  morality — the  softened  and  sweet- 
ened distillation  of  the  grim  old  Calvinistic  code — 
which  was  still  demanded  and  cherished  by  pub- 
lic opinion,  a  poetry  at  once  lofty  and  homely, 
was  just  what  met  their  needs.  It  expressed  the 
feelings  of  the  ordinary  man  with  an  added  insight 
and  an  aptness  which  sometimes  amounts  to 
genius,  also  it  was  a  poetry  simply  religious,  and 
full  of  perfect  phrases,  mixed  up  with  blundering 
metaphors  and  weak-kneed  commonplaces,  but 
with  frequent  vivid  flashes  of  high  truth,  and  it  at 
once  took  the  heart  of  a  poeple  who  were  anxious 
to  admire  and  not  trained  to  the  point  of  criticism, 
otherwise  they  could  not  have  received  Excelsior 
with  such  unanimous  acclaim.  Its  grammatical 
blunder  is  best  explained  by  the  history  of  the 


2O2  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

poem.  Longfellow  took  up  a  paper  with  the  seal 
of  the  New  York  state,  a  shield  with  a  rising  sun 
and  the  motto  Excelsior,  and  at  once  made  a  draft 
of  the  poem. 

Longfellow's  matter  and  manner  are  more  Euro- 
pean than  American.  He  gathered  up  the  romance 
of  European  poetry  and  set  it  to  simple  English 
song.  His  love  of  the  sea  is  one  of  his  strongest 
characteristics  and  comes  out  so  pre-eminently  in 
his  poem  The  Building  of  the  Ship  that  it  is  hard 
to  say  whether  the  sea  or  the  ship  is  the  central 
influence  of  this  which  is  the  most  American  and 
perhaps  also  the  most  poetical  of  all  his  poems. 
There  is  no  gainsaying  the  fact  that  he  has  had  a 
great  influence  as  a  writer  ;  and  though  neither 
profound  nor  highly  imaginative,  has  been  of  much 
service  to  his  own  and  the  rising  generation,  and 
in  nothing  more  so  than  in  the  foreign  culture  and 
that  breath  of  the  Middle  Ages  which  is  felt  as  the 
distinguishing  mark  of  so  many  of  his  writings,  and 
was  Longfellow's  best  gift  to  the  American  people. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

1822-1888 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD  was  the  eldest  son  of  Dr.  Ar- 
nold of  Rugby.  He  had  a  distinguished  career  at 
Oxford,  being  Scholar  of  Balliol,  Newdigate  prize- 
man and  Fellow  of  Oriel.  He  wrote  more  in  prose 
than  in  verse,  and  in  both  his  tone  is  often  con- 
temptuous because  he  saw  how  culture  was  impeded 
by  what  he  called  the  Philistinism  of  the  middle 
class  in  England,  and  often  sad  because,  looking 
round  he  saw  and  seemed  to  dwell  more  persist- 
ently on  the  evil  than  on  the  good  in  the  world, 
feeling  the  trouble  of  humanity  rather  than  its  joy. 
But  he  was  not  unsuccessful ;  for  he  spoke  to  those 
who  were  battling  with  fate,  and  certainly  helped 
them  to  keep  themselves  unsubdued  by  evil,  and 
to  men  of  intelligence  he  spoke  with  power  so  that 
his  judgment  always  had  weight. 

He  grew  up,  it  must  be  remembered,  in  troublous 
times  intellectually,  when  the  criticism  of  German 
scholars  had  a  very  disturbing  influence  on  thought- 
ful men  at  Oxford  just  starting  on  life's  journey. 
But  from  the  scepticism  thereby  occasioned  he 
"  emerged  "  like  the  Oxus  river  in  his  famous  poem 
and  taught  both  in  his  verse  and  still  more  in  his 
prose  writings  that  faith  in  God  and  in  right 
conduct  was  the  true  foundation  of  life's  action. 

203 


204  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

But  the  state  of  mental  perplexity  concerning  the 
problem  of  life,  whilst  it  lasted,  tinged  his  poetry 
with  sadness :  take  for  instance  Resignation, 
Empedocles,  Dover  Beach  ;  Requiescat,  a  Question, 
and  A  Summer  Night,  are  sad  but  full  of  beauty ; 
and  it  is  this  tendency  to  sadness  which  makes  him 
so  much  greater  in  elegy  than  in  any  other  form 
of  verse.  His  genius,  we  are  told,  seemed  to  be 
at  its  ease  when  writing  elegy,  such  as  The 
Scholar  Gipsy,  the  Memorial  Verses  to  Wordsworth, 
and  Thyrsis,  the  latter  about  Arthur  Clough,  a 
brother  poet  and  also  a  Rugby  and  Oxford  man 
though  a  little  Arnold's  senior.  Rugby  Chapel  is 
full  of  interest. 

It  has  been  said  that  he  was,  in  his  verse,  too 
self-conscious  and  too  didactic,  but  in  these  ex- 
quisite elegiac  poems  there  is  a  classic  beauty,  a 
pure  loveliness  and  a  melody  hardly  found  in  any 
writer  since  Spenser  wrote  his  Epithalamion. 
Classical  Matthew  Arnold  was  bound  to  be. 
Homer,  Sophocles,  Theocritus  and  Virgil  were  his 
poetic  godfathers.  His  first  volume  of  poems 
came  out  in  1829  when  he  was  27  and  contained 
such  fine  work  as  The  Forsaken  Merman,  Mycerinus, 
Resignation,  and  his  famous  sonnet  on  Shakespeare. 
In  the  preface  to  the  1853  volume,  which  contained 
most  of  his  earlier  and  anonymous  poems  of  1849 
and  1852  with  others  added,  he  says  that  the 
eternal  objects  of  poetry  are  human  actions,  and 
the  most  excellent  actions  are  those  which  appeal 
most  powerfully  to  the  human  affections.  It  signi- 
fies nothing  whether  the  actions  are  ancient  or 
modern  ;  but  he  adds  of  poets  that,  "  If  they  are 
endeavouring  to  practise  any  art,  they  remember 


Matthew  Arnold  205 

the  plain  and  simple  proceedings  of  the  old  artists, 
who  attained  their  grand  results  by  penetrating 
themselves  with  some  noble  and  significant  action, 
not  by  inflating  themselves  with  a  belief  in  the  pre- 
eminent importance  and  greatness  of  their  own 
times.  They  do  not  talk  of  their  mission,  nor  of 
interpreting  their  age,  nor  of  the  coming  poet  ;  all 
this,  they  know,  is  the  mere  delirium  of  vanity  ; 
their  business  is  not  to  praise  their  age,  but  to 
aff or  d  to  the  men  who  live  in  it  the  highest  pleasure 
which  they  are  capable  of  feeling.  If  asked  to 
afford  this  by  means  of  subjects  drawn  from  the  age 
itself,  they  ask  what  special  fitness  the  present  age 
has  for  supplying  them  :  they  are  told  that  it  is  an 
era  of  progress,  an  age  commissioned  to  carry  out 
the  great  ideas  of  industrial  development  and  social 
amelioration.  They  reply  that  with  all  this  they 
can  do  nothing  ;  that  the  elements  they  need  for 
the  exercise  of  their  art  are  great  actions,  calcu- 
lated powerfully  and  delightfully  to  affect  what  is 
permanent  in  the  human  soul ;  that  so  far  as  the 
present  age  can  supply  such  actions,  they  will 
gladly  make  use  of  them  ;  but  that  an  age  wanting 
in  moral  grandeur  can  with  difficulty  supply  such, 
and  an  age  of  spiritual  discomfort  with  difficulty 
be  powerfully  and  delightfully  affected  by  them. 
And  he  asserts  that  for  himself  "  in  the  sincere 
endeavour  to  learn  and  practise,  amid  the  bewilder- 
ing confusion  of  our  times,  what  is  sound  and  true 
in  poetical  art,  I  seemed  to  myself  to  find  the  only 
sure  guidance,  the  only  solid  footing,  among  the 
ancients." 

Accordingly  we  find  Matthew  Arnold  taking  some 
of  the  great  stories  of  the  past  for  his  poems.     The 


206  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Greek  story  of  Merope,  the  Eastern  tale  of  Sohrab 
and  Rustum,  the  Celtic  Tristram  and  Iseult  and  the 
Norse  Balder  Dead. 

But  to  him,  as  to  us,  the  ancients  really  mean 
the  Greeks  ;  and  accordingly  in  his  grand  epic 
Sohrab  and  Rustum  we  find  a  wealth  of  Homeric 
similes  which  in  an  oriental  poem  make  a  curious 
mixture.  The  story  is  a  most  pathetic  one,  and 
beautifully  told,  full  of  intense  feeling  and  illumi- 
nated by  beautiful  passages  descriptive  of  Nature. 
In  Tristram  and  Iseult  we  feel,  perhaps,  that  the 
story  of  Merlin  and  Vivian  dragged  in  at  the  end 
is  somewhat  out  of  place.  But  read  it  side  by  side 
with  Swinburne's  poem  of  the  same  name  and  how 
much  finer  it  is  in  conception  and  in  tone  ! 

Of  other  fine  poems  in  the  1853  volume  we  should 
mention  the  Strayed  Reveller,  the  Church  of  Brou, 
The  Scholar  Gipsy,  which  counts  among  his  very 
best  productions,  and  the  Forsaken  Merman,  one 
of  the  most  charming  and  melodious  poems  ever 
written,  of  which  Tennyson  once  said,  in  my  hear- 
ing, "  I  would  have  given  a  good  deal  to  have 
written  that."  Westminster  Abbey,  written  on 
Arthur  Stanley's  death,  and  his  poems  on  the  death 
of  his  brother,  bear  witness  to  his  affectionate  nature. 
His  genuine  love  of  animals  is  manifested  in  his 
latest  poems,  and  of  its  kind  what  can  be  better 
than  the  well-known  Geists  Grave  ? 

There  are  many  fine  passages  in  the  poems  ;  but 
high  as  we  should  rank  the  Merman,  Westminster 
Abbey  and  Sohrab  and  Rustum,  we  should  give  the 
palm  among  all  his  writings  to  The  Scholar  Gipsy  and 
Thyrsis.  In  both  of  these  Oxford  poems  as  also  in 
Dover  Beach,  he  gives  us  those  clear  bits  of  natural 


Matthew  Arnold  207 

description  which  are  so  accurate  and  so  pictorial. 
True,  that  Nature  with  him,  as  with  Tennyson,  was 
the  Nature  of  Modern  Science  acting  in  obedience 
to  laws,  and  he  loves  to  contrast  her  calm  and 
settled  modes  with  the  hurry  and  turmoil  of  human 
life.  Yet,  as  in  Tennyson  too,  his  beautiful  lan- 
guage and  his  faculty  for  hitting  on  just  the  right 
epithet  when  describing  natural  objects,  and  the 
exquisite  tenderness  for  Oxford  in  the  pastoral 
poems,  give  a  charm  and  a  feeling  to  his  verse  which 
mark  him  as  one  of  England's  real  poets. 

His  tender  feeling  shows  in  many  of  his  poems  in 
such  lines  as — 

Mild  o'er  her  grave  ye  mountains  shine  ! 

Gently  by  his  ye  waters  glide  ! 
To  that  in  you  which  is  divine 

They  were  allied  ; 

and  in  his  well-known  Memorial  Verses  on 
Wordsworth. 

His  excellent  choice  of  words,  in  the  famous  line 
from  Obermann  Once  More — 

The  East  bow'd  low  before  the  blast 

In  patient  deep  disdain, 
She  let  the  legions  thunder  past 

And  plunged  in  thought  again, 

or  again,  "  The  unplumbed  salt  estranging  sea  " 
and  the  description  of  Sophocles,  "  who  saw  life 
steadily  and  saw  it  whole."  While  for  a  beautiful 
picture  straight  from  Nature  I  don't  know  where 
in  any  poet  we  can  find  a  description  of  a  summer 
evening  to  approach  the  opening  lines  of  Bacchan- 
alia or  The  New  Age — 

The  evening  comes,  the  fields  are  still, 
The  tinkle  of  the  thirsty  rill, 


208  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Unheard  all  day,  ascends  again  ; 
Deserted  is  the  half -mown  plain, 
Silent  the  swaths  !  the  ringing  wain, 
The  mowers'  cry,  the  dogs'  alarms 
All  housed  within  the  sleeping  farms  ! 
The  business  of  the  day  is  done, 
The  last-left  haymaker  is  gone. 
And  from  the  thyme  upon  the  height 
And  from  the  elder  blossom  white 
And  pale  dog  roses  in  the  hedge, 
And  from  the  mint  plant  in  the  sedge, 
In  puffs  of  balm  the  night  air  blows 
The  perfume  which  the  day  foregoes. 
And  on  the  pure  horizon  far, 
See  paling  with  the  first-born  star 
The  liquid  sky  above  the  hill  ! 
The  evening  comes,  the  fields  are  still. 

He  was  fond  of  writing  poems  without  rhyme  such 
as  Consolation,  The  Future,  Rugby  Chapel  and 
Haworth  Churchyard,  and  in  these  too  his  descrip- 
tions of  Nature  and  natural  objects  are  remarkable 
for  their  accuracy  and  their  beauty.  Witness  the 
little  vignettes  of  the  Yorkshire  Moors  in  Haworth 
Churchyard  and  the  simile  of  the  dying  eagle  and 
her  unconscious  mate  in  that  fine  and  pathetic 
poem  Sohrab  and  Rust-urn  in  which  more  than 
any  other  he  shows  his  mastery  of  blank  verse. 
The  poem  begins  with  a  picture  of  the  Oxus  river 
at  dawn  and  ends  with  the  same  by  starlight— 

And  a  cold  fog  with  night 
Crept  from  the  Oxus.     Soon  a  hum  arose, 

*  *  * 

And  Rustum  and  his  son  were  left  alone. 
But  the  majestic  river  floated  on, 
Out  of  the  mist  and  hum  of  that  low  land, 
Into  the  frosty  starlight,  and  there  moved 
Rejoicing,  through  the  hushed  Chorasmian  waste, 
Under  the  solitary  moon. 

His  longest  poems  are  the  dramatic  Merope  and 


Matthew  Arnold  209 

Enipcdocles  on  Etna,  the  latter  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  of  all  his  writings,  full  of  fine  thoughts 
and  studded  with  notable  lyrics. 

In  the  Buried  Life  he  lays  stress  on  the  solitude 
of  the  human  soul,  a  subject  which  he  frequently 
alludes  to,  but  perhaps,  as  Mr.  F.  Bickley  in  his 
little  volume  in  the  Life  and  Poetry  series  points 
out,  the  Greek  precept,  "  Know  thyself/'  is  the 
main  motive  of  this  fine  poem,  which  ends  with 
these  touching  lines — 

Only — but  this  is  rare — 

When  a  beloved  hand  is  laid  in  ours, 

When,  jaded  with  the  rush  and  glare 

Of  the  interminable  hours, 

Our  eyes  can  in  another's  eyes  read  clear, 

When  our  world-deafen'd  ear 

Is  by  the  tones  of  a  loved  voice  caress 'd, 

A  bolt  is  shot  back  somewhere  in  our  breast 
And  a  lost  pulse  of  feeling  stirs  again  : 
The  eye  sinks  inward,  and  the  heart  lies  plain, 
And  what  we  mean,  we  say,  and  what  we  would,  we  know. 
A  man  becomes  aware  of  his  life's  flow 
And  hears  its  winding  murmur,  and  he  sees 
The  meadows  where  it  glides,  the  sun,  the  breeze. 
And  there  arrives  a  lull  in  the  hot  race 
Wherein  he  doth  for  ever  chase 
That  flying  and  elusive  shadow,  Rest. 
An  air  of  coolness  plays  upon  his  face, 
And  an  unwonted  calm  pervades  his  breast. 

And  then  he  thinks  he  knows 
The  Hills  where  his  life  rose, 
And  the  Sea  where  it  goes. 

This  tells  us  that  love  alone,  and  that  rarely,  can 
show  a  man  what  he  really  is.  So  deeply  buried 
out  of  sight,  or  locked  in  his  own  bosom  is  a  man's 
own  personality. 

Along  with  this  poem  we  should  read  Self- 
Dependence,  in  which  an  appeal  is  made  to  Nature 
to  calm  the  distracted  mind  and  teach  it  to  be  itself. 


2io  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Resolve  to  be  thyself  :  and  know,  that  he 
Who  finds  himself,  loses  his  misery. 

Finally,  in  the  poem  Morality  we  go  a  step  further 
and  find  that  the  effort  man  makes  brings  him  a 
reward  even  higher  than  any  that  Nature  can 
bestow,  for  Nature  needs  no  effort  and  uses  none. 

There  is  no  effort  on  my  brow — 
I  do  not  strive,  I  do  not  weep. 
I  rush  with  the  swift  spheres,  and  glow 
In  joy,  and,  when  I  will,  I  sleep. 

Yet  that  severe,  that  earnest  air, 
I  saw,  I  felt  it  once — but  where  ? 

I  knew  not  yet  the  gauge  of  Time, 
Nor  wore  the  manacles  of  Space. 
I  felt  it  in  some  other  clime — 
I  sa'w  it  in  some  other  place. 
— 'Twas  when  the  heavenly  house  I  trod, 
And  lay  upon  the  breast  of  God. 

Like  all  great  poets,  Matthew  Arnold  was  a  preacher, 
and  an  attractive  one,  for  he  was  absolutely  free 
from  cant,  and  always  transparently  honest,  hence 
many  cultivated  men  have  declared  that  they  got 
more  good  from  his  poems  than  from  any  other 
author  living  or  dead. 


D.  G.  ROSSETTI 

1828-1882 

DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI  was  three  parts  Italian, 
being  English  only  through  his  mother's  mother, 
who  was  a  Miss  Pierce  and  married  Gaetano  Poli- 
dori ;  both  his  grandfathers  were  literary  men  but 
neither  of  them  artists.  Dante  Gabriel,  born 
1828,  was  the  second  of  four  children,  Maria  being 
the  eldest  and  the  two  younger  ones  were  William 
and  Christina.  As  a  boy  he  went  to  King's  College 
School  but  left  at  15  and  took  to  the  study  of 
painting.  At  the  age  of  20  he  joined  the  Pre- 
raphaelite  Brotherhood,  which  consisted  of  four, 
himself  and  Millais,  Holman  Hunt,  and  Woolner, 
and  later  James  Collinson  and  William  Rossetti, 
F.  Stephen  and  W.  H.  Deverill,  through  whom 
Dante  Rossetti  made  acquaintance  with  Miss  Siddal, 
a  girl  with  a  wonderful  abundance  of  red  hair  who 
was  sitting  to  Deverill  as  a  model.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  a  Sheffield  cutler  and  herself  a  dress- 
maker's assistant  in  London,  and  not  without 
artistic  and  poetic  gifts.  Rossetti  was  immensely 
struck  with  her  and  after  a  long  engagement  they 
were  married  in  1860. 

His  first  publication  had  been  in  the  Magazine  of 
the  Preraphaelite  Brotherhood,  called  The  Germ, 
to  No.  I  of  which  he  contributed  My  Sister's  Sleep, 


212  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

and  to  No.  II  that  most  noted  of  all  his  poems, 
composed  when  he  was  but  19,  The  Blessed  Damo- 
zeL  In  No.  IV  he  had  a  poem  called  Pax  Vobis 
dated  "  Ghent,  Church  of  St.  Bavon,"  which  is 
now  called  World's  Worth,  the  refrain  in  the  last  line 
of  each  stanza  being  now  entirely  changed.  There 
were  but  four  numbers  of  The  Germ,  the  last  two 
being  called  Art  and  Poetry.  They  came  out  in 
January,  February,  March  and  May,  1850.  They 
were  reprinted  in  facsimile  in  1901  with  a  long  and 
interesting  introduction  by  W  Rossetti.  In  1856 
he  contributed  The  Burden  of  Nineveh  to  The 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  Magazine,  of  which  Ruskin 
wrote  :  "I  am  wild  to  know  who  is  the  author  of 
The  Burden  of  Nineveh  ;  it  is  glorious."  In  1861 
he  published  a  volume  of  translations  from  the 
Italian  poets  and  obtained  at  this,  which  was  the 
happy  though  sadly  short  period  of  his  married 
life,  a  certain  reputation  as  both  artist  and  poet. 

Rossetti  was  working  hard  now  as  a  painter  and 
living  near  Blackfriars  Bridge ;  next  year  he  moved 
to  14,  Cheyne  Walk,  his  brother  and  George  Mere- 
dith and  Swinburne  being  under  the  same  roof, 
and  this  was  his  home  for  two  years. 

In  1862  his  wife  died  and  he  was  so  overcome 
with  grief  that  he  buried  with  her  the  MS.  of  a 
volume  of  poems  he  was  on  the  point  of  bringing 
out,  and  there  they  remained  in  the  coffin  with  his 
dead  wife  for  seven  years,  when  they  were  disin- 
terred, and  in  1870  were  published.  A  somewhat 
fierce  attack  on  them  by  R.  Buchanan  in  the  Con- 
temporary under  the  heading  "  The  Fleshly  School 
of  Poetry/' condemning  them  both  on  literary  and 
also  on  moral  grounds  had  an  inordinate  effect  on 


D.  G.  Rossetti  213 

Rossetti,  who  already  suffered  from  insomnia, 
which  he  relieved  by  a  somewhat  reckless  use  of 
chloral.  Still  he  went  on  painting,  though  after  a 
dangerous  illness  in  1872  he  became  secluded  in 
his  habits  and  often  gloomy  and  depressed.  He 
also  wrote  and  brought  out  a  second  volume, 
called  Ballads  and  Sonnets,  in  1881. 

He  sought  change  of  air  and  scene  at  this  time 
in  the  beautiful  Vale  of  St.  John  near  Keswick,  but 
it  was  no  good,  and  he  returned  to  Birchington-on- 
Sea,  near  Margate,  where  he  spent  his  last  days 
nursed  by  his  sister  Christina  and  constantly  at- 
tended by  Mr.  Hall  Caine.  He  died  on  Easter 
Sunday,  April  9,  1882,  aged  54,  and  was  buried  in 
the  churchyard  at  Birchington.  His  brother  tells 
us  that  he  often  heard  him  say  that  he  looked  upon 
himself  as  more  a  poet  than  a  painter,  which  re- 
minds one  of  Salvator  Rosa's  epitaph  in  the  church 
of  St.  Maria  degli  Angeli  at  Rome,  "  Second  to 
none  of  his  time  as  a  painter,  and  equal  to  the  first 
of  the  poets  of  all  time." 


CHRISTINA  ROSSETT1 

1830-1894 

CHRISTINA  ROSSETTI,  who  wrote  poems  both  in 
English  and  Italian,  is  a  really  important  figure  in 
English  poetical  literature.  She  began  writing 
when  only  12  years  old,  and  by  the  time  she  was 
17,  she  had  a  little  note-book  quite  full. 

The  Prince's  Progress  and  Other  Poems  was  pub- 
lished in  1866  ;  it  is  rather  a  tale  than  a  poem. 
The  Goblin  Market  and  Other  Poems  had  preceded 
it  by  four  years.  It  contains  some  excellent  short 
pieces,  such  as  At  Home,  A  Birthday,  Twilight 
Calm,  Up-hill,  etc.,  and  some  "  Devotional  Pieces," 
and  whether  they  are  tinged  with  sadness  or  filled 
with  joy  and  brightness  they  are  always  original 
and  characteristic,  and  none  more  so  than  the 
quaintly  imaginative  Goblin  Market. 

She  wrote  rather  fitfully  as  the  spirit  moved 
her,  never  made  a  business  of  poetry,  and  never 
seemed  to  wish  for  publicity,  hence  she  left  many 
unpublished  poems,  most  of  which  were  printed 
by  her  brother  William  with  the  title  New  Poems  by 
Christina  Rossetti.  She  wrote  to  her  brother  Dante 
Gabriel,  about  her  poetry  :  "  It  is  something  of 
a  lyric  cry  and  as  such  I  will  back  it  against 
all  skilled  labour."  Certainly  she  felt  herself  to 
be  a  poet,  but  not  a  great  one.  "  It  is  impossible," 

214 


Christina  RosseUi  215 

she  said,  when  urged  to  write,  "  to  go  on  singing 
out  aloud  to  one's  one-stringed  lyre/'  There  is  a 
profile  of  her  in  the  New  Poems  reproduced  from  a 
study  of  her  face  by  Gabriel  Rossetti,  made  when 
she  was  18,  and  it  is  at  this  time  that  she  also  sat 
for  the  full-faced  Madonna  in  his  picture  Ecce 
Ancilla  Domini,  now  in  the  National  Gallery. 

At  one  time  she  tried  governess  work,  but  soon 
gave  it  up  ;  and  in  a  letter  at  the  time  she  says  : 
"  I  am  rejoiced  to  feel  that  my  health  does  really 
unfit  me  for  miscellaneous  governessing." 

Though  not  writing  much,  she  always  seemed  to 
feel  that  she  and  her  brother  Gabriel  were  poets 
and  different  from  other  people,  but  she  was  quite 
humble  about  it,  only  content  not  to  share  the 
ordinary  work  and  pleasures  of  the  majority  of  her 
acquaintances.  Some  might  have  called  her  mor- 
bidly devout ;  she  certainly  twice  gave  up  the  idea 
of  marriage  because  she  did  not  find  that  the  men 
came  up  to  her  standard  of  what  a  Christian  and  a 
Churchman  should  be,  but  there  is  nothing  mawk- 
ish about  her  writings.  There  is  often  a  sadness 
and  often  a  monotony  of  subject,  but  there  is  a 
visible  courage  in  all  of  them  and  a  determination 
to  go  her  own  way  ;  and  at  times  there  is  a  playful- 
ness and  a  wealth  of  imagination  which  is  quite 
remarkable.  Perhaps  the  main  charm  of  her  ven-e 
is  the  feeling  of  reality  in  it.  She  is  never  posing, 
but  says  just  what  she  thinks,  and  her  thoughts  are 
all  her  own,  for  she  held  no  converse  with  and  took 
(her  brother  William  tells  us)  no  advice  from  any 
one  about  what  she  wrote.  Indeed,  he  lived  with 
her  forty-six  years  and  in  all  that  time  he  never 
once  saw  her  composing.  Yet  they  were  a  most 


216  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

affectionate  family,  and  the  last  words  of  her 
brother's  Preface  to  the  volume  of  New  Poems  are 
these,  "  Her  memory  is  one  of  my  most  sacred 
treasures,  and  her  works  and  their  repute  are 
proportionately  dear  to  me." 

The  following  little  poem  may  be  taken  as  a 
specimen  of  her  brightness  : — 

A  BIRTHDAY. 

My  heart  is  like  a  singing  bird 

Whose  nest  is  in  a  watered  shoot ; 
My  heart  is  like  an  appletree 

Whose  boughs  are  bent  with  thickset  fruit ; 
My  heart  is  hke  a  rainbow  shell 

That  paddles  in  a  halcyon  sea ; 
My  heart  is  gladder  than  all  these 
Because  my  love  is  come  to  me. 

Raise  me  a  dais  of  silk  and  down  ; 

Hang  it  with  vair  and  purple  dyes  ; 
Carve  it  in  doves,  and  pomegranates, 

And  peacocks  with  a  hundred  eyes  ; 
Work  it  in  gold  and  silver  grapes, 

In  leaves,  and  silver  fleurs-de-lys  ; 

Because  the  birthday  of  my  life 
Is  come,  my  love  is  come  to  me. 

And  these  stanzas  from  Twilight  Calm  are  of  such  a 
quality  that  one  can  only  wish  that  she  had  left  us 
more  :— 

Stanza  i. 

Oh,  pleasant  eventide  ! 

Clouds  on  the  western  side 
Grow  grey  and  greyer  hiding  the  warm  sun  : 
The  bees  and  birds,  their  happy  labours  done, 

Seek  their  close  nests  and  bide. 

Stanza  5. 

From  far  the  lowings  come 
Of  cattle  driven  home  : 


Christina  Rossetti  217 

From  farther  still  the  wind  brings  fitfully 
The  vast  continual  murmur  of  the  sea, 
Now  loud,  now  almost  dumb. 

Stanzas  7  and  8. 

Hark  !  that's  the  nightingale, 

Telling  the  self-same  tale 

Her  song  told  when  this  ancient  earth  was  young  : 
So  echoes  answered  when  her  song  was  sung 

In  the  first  wooded  vale. 

We  call  it  love  and  pain 

The  passion  of  her  strain  ; 
And  yet  we  little  understand  or  know  : 
Why  should  it  not  be  rather  joy  that  so 

Throbs  in  each  throbbing  vein  ? 


R.   BROWNING 

1812-1889 

THE  following  is  a  critique  on  a  new  Life  of  Brown- 
ing by  Mr.  Herford,  which  came  out  not  long  ago 
in  the  Westminster  Review.  "  He  is  a  bold  man 
who  writes  a  Life  of  Browning  nowadays.  Robert 
Browning  himself  did  everything  to  make  the 
biographer's  task  impossible.  The  fate  of  Thomas 
Carlyle  gave  an  ugly  warning  to  his  contemporaries. 
Tennyson  left  his  memory  in  trust  to  his  son. 
Browning  went  even  further.  He  tore  up  every 
letter  he  could  lay  hands  on.  He  defied  the  body- 
snatchers.  But  in  doing  so  he  deprived  the  world 
of  much  precious  treasure,  and  left  his  life  in  almost 
as  much  obscurity  as  some  of  his  own  poetry. 

' '  The  result  is  that  Browning's  biographers  soon 
find  their  material  exhausted.  They  have  to  turn 
to  his  poems,  and  must  rapidly  pass  from  biography 
to  criticism.  Mr.  Herford  gives  us  a  good  deal  of 
this,  and  the  greater  part  of  this  little  volume  is 
taken  up  with  prose  sketches  of  Browning's  poems. 
We  do  not  dispute  that  there  is  a  large  demand  for 
this  sort  of  thing.  There  must  indeed  by  now  be  a 
large  class  of  people  who  are  thoroughly  acquainted 
with  Browning's  plots,  and  perhaps  even  Brown- 
ing's poetry.  The  method  has  many  excuses. 
Browning  is  not  merely  difficult.  He  may  be  said 
almost  to  have  created  a  language  of  his  own,  which 
requires  learning  as  much  as  any  other  dialect  of 

218 


Browning  219 

English.  But  the  worst  of  it  is  that  he  was  a 
poet ;  and  those  who  read  him  in  Bowdlerized 
prose  cannot  therefore  be  said  to  have  read  Brown- 
ing. Browning's  stories — stories  like  The  Return 
of  the  Druses,  or  The  Blot  in  the  Scutcheon — are  in 
themselves  extremely  unprofitable.  With  wilful 
caprice  he  tore  almost  any  page  from  the  book  of 
life  to  serve  as  material  for  his  poetry.  The  Inn 
Album  is  just  a  police  story,  and  even  The  Ring 
and  the  Book  is  based  on  a  narrative  little  above  the 
level  of  the  Newgate  Calendar.  Browning's  con- 
tribution in  all  these  cases  is  precisely  the  poetry— 
the  revel  of  word  and  phrase  and  line  and  rhythm 
that  made  him  Browning  and  not  another.  With 
the  greatest  respect,  therefore,  to  writers  like  Mrs. 
Orr  and  Mr.  Herford,  we  are  afraid  that  they  become 
the  unconscious  creators  of  a  class  of  Browningites 
who  know  not  Browning. 

"  Another  result  of  this  dearth  of  material  is 
that  all  Browning's  biographers  have  to  devote 
many  chapters  to  Browning's  '  philosophy  of  life.' 
Now  we  make  bold  to  say  that  Browning  had  no 
philosophy  of  life.  He  was  not  a  philosopher  at 
all,  but  a  poet.  It  follows  that  he  was  a  learner 
rather  than  a  teacher.  His  poetry  is  full,  not  of 
the  meaning,  but  of  the  wonder,  the  mystery,  the 
incomprehensibility,  of  life.  With  all  his  agility 
of  intellect,  he  was  primarily  a  man  of  perceptions 
and  intuitions.  He  stood  like  a  man  in  a  great  hall 
full  of  sounds  and  lights  and  scents  from  some 
infinite  space  beyond,  and  his  chief  task  was  to 
convey  to  us  some  of  the  vividness  of  the  impres- 
sions produced  on  a  sensibility  of  almost  unique 
quickness  and  responsiveness.  From  time  to  time 


22O  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

he  threw  out  splendid  assertions,  convictions,  even 
dogmas.  Through  the  maze  of  evanescent  sensa- 
tions he  saw  from  time  to  time,  as  in  an  ecstasy, 
recurrent  flashes  of  the  immortal  and  the  divine. 
They  came  to  him  like  the  intermittent  gleams  of  a 
lighthouse  to  a  mariner  on  a  dark  sea.  We  too  are 
mariners  on  the  same  sea,  and  those  glimpses  of  his 
provide  for  many  of  us  no  mean  guidance.  But  if 
we  try  to  materialize  them  in  some  definite  set  of 
maxims,  we  find  ourselves  moving  among  a  maze  of 
contradictions,  and  we  destroy  at  once  their  beauty 
and  their  value. 

"  Mr.  Herford,  to  do  him  justice,  seems  to  have 
some  sense  of  this  danger  now  and  again,  and  in  one 
admirable  passage  fully  admits  that  Browning's 
'  conception  of  the  nature  of  man  was  not  a  com- 
pact and  consistent  system,  but  a  group  of  intui- 
tions nourished  from  widely  different  regions  of 
soul  and  sense/  But  Mr.  Herford  has  to  fill  his 
volume,  and  before  the  end  he  is  caught  in  the  toils. 
There  are  the  usual  chapters  on  '  Browning  the 
Poet/  and  '  Browning  the  Interpreter  of  Life,' 
with  the  usual  sub-heads  about  Browning's  '  Joy 
in  Power/  '  Joy  in  Soul/  about  '  Time  and  Eter- 
nity/ '  Love/  '  Progress  and  Order/  and  so  forth. 
There  is  nothing  dangerous  about  such  reading. 
It  provides  innocent  leisure  occupation  for  many 
who  might  be  worse  employed.  But  does  it  tend 
to  a  better  understanding  of  Browning  ?  We 
sometimes  doubt  it.  We  have  had  an  immense 
number  of  such  books  during  the  last  twenty  years  ; 
a  collection  of  them  would  fill  a  fair-sized  library. 
They  have  brought  Robert  Browning  into  disrepute 
with  many  sensible  people.  They  suggest  the 


Browning  221 

question,  Would  it  not  be  better  if  people  read  a 
little  less  about  his  '  philosophy  '  and  a  little  more 
of  his  actual  poetry  ?  After  all,  the  volumes  of 
selections  which  his  publishers  so  wisely  put  forth 
from  time  to  time  do  more  to  build  up  Robert 
Browning's  real  and  deserved  position.  They  help 
the  nervous  to  take  the  first  plunge.  Let  us  hope 
that  Messrs.  Smith  and  Elder  will  give  us  more  of 
them/' 

To  this  review,  with  which  I  in  the  main  agree, 
I  should  like  to  add  a  few  remarks  of  my  own,  and 
give  you  a  few  facts  about  the  poet's  early  life 
which  he  himself  supplied  to  his  friend  Mr.  Gosse, 
in  1881  ;  being  as  he  said  "  Tired  of  this  tangle  of 
facts  and  fancies,"  by  which  he  meant  the  biogra- 
phic sketches  of  himself  which  kept  appearing  in  the 
Magazines.  To  begin  then — 

Robert  Browning  was  born  at  Camberwell  on 
May  8,  1812,  and  died  in  Venice,  December  12, 
1889,  act.  77.  His  father,  who  died  in  1866,  aged 
84,  was  gifted  with  a  considerable  amount  of  poetic 
genius.  He  did  not  write  much  but  he  helped  con- 
sciously and  of  set  purpose  to  train  his  son  to  be  a 
poet.  He  had  one  sister  who  kept  house  for  him 
in  his  closing  years,  and  she  remembered  him  as  a 
very  little  boy  walking  round  and  round  the  dining- 
room  and  spanning  out  the  scansion  of  his  verses 
with  his  hand  on  the  smooth  magohany.  Already 
at  8  years  old  he  had  seriously  debated  with  him- 
self whether  he  would  be  a  painter  or  musician, 
and  when  he  was  12  he  had  written  poems  enough 
to  fill  a  volume ;  but,  though  frequently  offered, 
no  publisher  would  take  them. 

It  seems  that  he  ha^  by  this  time  settled  that  his 


222  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

line  was  poetry,  but  it  was  thirty-eight  years  later 
that  he  wrote  in  the  dedication  of  Men  and  Women 
to  his  wife  : — 

I  shall  never  in  the  years  remaining 
Paint  you  pictures,  no,  nor  carve  you  statues, 
Make  you  music  that  should  all-express  me  : 
Verse  and  nothing  else,  I  have  to  give  you. 

Whilst  the  boy  was  making  his  earliest  attempts  at 
verse,  it  is  curious  to  remember  that  Byron,  Shelley 
and  Keats  were  all  still  alive.  And  when  he  was  13 
his  mother  gave  him  all  Shelley's  works  and  three 
volumes  of  Keats  which  showed  him  what  could 
be  done  in  verse  and  made  him  properly  dissatis- 
fied with  all  he  had  yet  done  in  that  line  himself. 
He  went  to  Dulwich  College,  then  had  a  tutor  at 
home  and  for  a  very  short  time  was  at  London 
University.  He  seems  always  to  have  been  allowed 
and  encouraged  to  follow  his  own  bent,  and  as  he 
grew  up  he  was  allowed  to  pursue  poetry  unshackled 
by  any  profession.  This  being  settled  he  at  once 
began  to  plan  gigantic  schemes  for  monodramatic 
epics.  Narratives  of  the  life  of  typical  souls.  Of 
several  then  sketched  out  only  one  exists,  and  that 
one  incomplete,  but  this  was  the  seed  from  which, 
later,  sprang  Sordello. 

In  1832,  when  he  was  20,  he  finished  Pauline. 
It  has  some  true  poetry  in  it  of  the  Endymion 
type,  but  also  all  the  faults  of  early  and  hasty  com- 
position which,  if  you  read  Browning's  preface  to 
it,  when  he  was  driven  to  publish  it,  in  1867,  you 
will  see  that  he  was  fully  aware  of.  He  says,  "  The 
first  piece  I  acknowledge  and  retain  with  extreme 
repugnance,  indeed,  purely  of  necessity."  It  came 
out  anonymously,  but  D.  G,  Rossetti  was  so  struck 


Browning  223 

by  it  that  he  copied  out  the  whole  of  its  seventy 
pages  in  the  British  Museum  Reading-room.  Allan 
Cunningham  reviewed  it  kindly  in  the  Athenaeum, 
but  no  one  else  noticed  it  and  nobody  read  it. 

In  1834  ne  set  out  on  his  travels  and  spent  a 
long  time  at  St.  Petersburg.  Wisely  he  wrote 
but  little,  yet  he  sent  four  poems  to  Fox's  Monthly 
Repository,  one  with  the  cumbrous  title  of  Johannes 
Agricola  in  Meditation,  another  was  Porphyria's 
Lover,  to  my  mind  a  very  disagreeable  piece,  and 
he  wrote  the  song,  A  King  lived  long  ago,  afterwards 
inserted  in  Pippa  Passes  and  also  a  sonnet — his 
only  one,  I  think — which  he  absolutely  forgot,  and 
it  is  not  found  in  any  edition  of  his  poems  before 
1906.  One  of  the  family  of  Fox,  the  publisher,  had 
however  preserved  it  and  identified  it  as  his. 
Strange  that  he  who  knew  his  own  works  so  well 
should  have  forgotten  it,  for  it  is  a  gem  in  its  way, 
though  more  a  poem  than  a  sonnet.  (You  will 
find  it  at  the  end  of  the  volume  in  Dent's  Every- 
man's Library.  ED.) 

Eyes  calm  beside  thee  (Lady,  couldst  thou  know !) 

May  turn  away  thick  with  fast  gathering  tears  : 
I  glance  not  where  all  gaze  :  thrilling  and  low 

Their  passionate  praises  reach  thee — my  cheek  wears 
Alone  no  wonder  when  thou  passest  by ; 

Thy  tremulous  lids,  bent  and  suffused,  reply 
To  the  irrepressible  homage  which  doth  glow 

On  every  lip  but  mine  :     If  in  thine  ears 
Their  accents  linger — and  thou  dost  recall 

Me  as  I  stood,  still,  guarded,  very  pale, 

Beside  each  votarist  whose  lighted  brow 
Wore  worship,  like  an  aureole,  "  O'er  them  all 

My  beauty,"  thou  wilt  murmur,  "  did  prevail 
Save  that  one  only." — Lady,  couldst  thou  know  ! 

Next  year,  1835,  came  Paracelsus,  a  drarna  of  a 


224  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

shapeless  kind,  full  of  eloquent  casuistry,  not  with- 
out melody  but  with  more  than  one  unbroken 
soliloquy  of  over  300  lines.  Such  disregard  of  the 
canons  of  artistic  form  had  its  natural  results ;  none 
could  read  the  poem,  they  were  repelled  if  they 
tried.  The  Athenaeum,  which  smiled  on  his  first 
efforts  in  Pauline,  dismissed  Paracelsus  with  the 
remark  that  it  was  quite  useless  to  reproduce  the 
obscurity  of  Shelley  minus  his  poetic  beauty. 
And  doubtless  the  Athenaeum  was  right.  For 
poetry  is  one  of  the  noblest  forms  of  art ;  and  what 
is  Art  ?  It  has  been  well  said  that  Art  is  Life 
lifted  into  a  higher,  purer  atmosphere,  an  illumin- 
ation of  Life,  making  Beauty  and  Truth  become 
one.  It  deals  with  Life  in  all  its  phases,  lofty  and 
humble,  but  rejects  the  ignoble  and  the  simply 
repulsive  as  not  fit  subjects.  Of  this  acknowledged 
law  Browning  was  singularly  regardless  ;  he  had  a 
magic  power  for  clothing  any  subject  with  verse, 
and  he  rather  revelled  in  taking  an  unlikely  or 
even  repellent  subject  on  which  to  exercise  his  skill, 
such  as  The  Heretic's  Tragedy,  or  Holy  Cross  Day. 
We  see  the  same  opposition  to  received  opinion 
in  his  choice  of  names  for  his  poems.  Red-Cotton- 
Nightcap- country  is  not  poetic,  nor  is  A  Bean-stripe 
also  Apple-eating,  and  what  are  we  to  say.  to 
Jochanan  Hakhadosh  ?  Browning  also  wrote  very 
long  poems  on  inadequate  subjects,  though  it  is  a 
canon  of  Art  that  a  long  poem  must  have  a  great 
subject.  We  noticed  when  studying  Coleridge  that 
he  wrote  for  some  years  before  he  found  out  that 
poetry  can  never  be  used  for  metaphysics  or  self- 
introspection,  and  I  think  we  must  agree  with  the 
writer  who  says  that  a  poet's  personal  opinions  are 


Browning  225 

the  most  perishable  part  of  him,  and  the  last  thing 
that  should  be  imported  into  his  song.  If  this  is 
so,  the  looking  for  sermons  in  Browning's  work, 
though  it  may  result  in  digging  up  many  nodules 
which  when  laboriously  opened  may  be  found  to 
contain  the  fossil  bones  of  some  undoubted  truth,  is 
not  the  right  course  to  pursue  for  those  who  would 
appreciate  the  art  of  the  poet.  His  characters  argue 
infinitely,  it  is  their  function.  But  Browning's  own 
part  in  the  poem  is  not  the  argument  but  the  verse. 
His  range,  variety  and  sympathy  were  extraordin- 
ary, and  no  one  had  greater  powers  of  versification 
than  he  had,  at  all  events  since  the  days  of  the  In- 
goldsby  Legends,  but  he  exercised  them  not  unfre- 
quently  in  a  manner  that  lacked  control,  resulting  in 
far-fetched  and  unpleasantly  startling  rhymes,  as  well 
as  in  unusual  and  unmelodious  forms  of  expres- 
sion. 

A  year  after  Paracelsus,  his  tragedy  Straff ord  came 
out,  November  1836.  It  was  acted  in  March  1837, 
by  Macready  and  Helen  Fauci  t  at  Co  vent  Garden, 
and,  but  for  the  financial  collapse  of  Macready 's  com- 
pany after  the  fifth  night  it  would  have  had  a  great 
run,  but  both  this  fine  play  and  The  Blot  on  the 
Scutcheon  which  was  acted  by  Phelps  and  Helen 
Faucit  to  a  crowded  house  in  1843,  were  most  unfor- 
tunately cut  short  by  the  collapse  of  the  company 
that  was  playing  them .  The  worst  was  that  the  poem 
(Strafford)  did  not  sell.  In  1838  to  1840  Browning 
had  been  writing  Sordello,  an  epic  in  which  was  chroni- 
cled the  whole  life  of  a  single  soul.  It  was  named, 
"  The  entirely  unintelligible  Sordello,"  and  so  it  has 
remained  for  upwards  of  sixty-five  years  to  many, 
simple  and  scholar  alike.  It  must,  say  the  students 

Q 


226  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

of  it,  be  read  three  times  before  it  begins  to  be,  we 
will  not  say  entirely  lucid  but  luminous. 

It  was  Browning's  protest  against  the  namby- 
pamby  school  of  poetry  which  prevailed  at  the  time. 
But  it  is  over  condensed  and  over  rapid,  and  exhibits, 
as  Browning  himself  allows  in  explanation  of  his  ad- 
mitted error,  "  a  too  arrogant  contempt  for  the  com- 
monplace habits  of  the  intelligence."  Twenty-three 
years  later  he  tried  to  re-write  it  in  an  easier  form,  but 
the  attempt  was  a  failure. 

Sordello  found  no  sale  at  all ;  and  Browning  sadly 
felt  that  his  poetry  was  nothing  but  an  expense  to  his 
friends  who  paid  for  the  publishing.  At  this  juncture 
Ed.  Moxon,  who  was  bringing  out  the  Old  Elizabethan 
Dramatists  in  a  cheap  form  said  that  if  Mr.  Browning 
would  consent  to  print  his  poems  as  pamphlets  on 
one  sheet  using  this  cheap  type  the  expense  would  be 
inconsiderable.  The  poet  jumped  at  the.  idea  and 
the  series  of  Bells  and  Pomegranates^egan,  each  poem 
being  printed  separately  on  a  sheet  of  sixteen  pages 
with  double  columns  and  published  first  at  6d.  then 
at  is.  and  finally  at  2s.  6d.  Pippa  Passes  led  the 
way.  The  public  took  to  this,  as  the  poet  had  come 
down  to  a  level  which  they  could  understand,  and 
they  took  to  the  seven  numbers  which  followed  be- 
tween 1841  and  1846,  the  year  of  his  marriage.  They 
included  the  Dramatic  Lyrics  and  some  of  the  Drama- 
tic Romances  and  The  Return  of  the  Druses,  and  ended 
in  a  number  of  double  size  with  Luria  and  A  Soul's 
Tragedy.  The  "Men  and  Women "  series  was 
written  partly  before  and  partly  after  his  marriage, 
and  dedicated  to  his  wife. 

Early  in  the  series  when  the  Dramatic  Lyrics  were 
being  printed,  the  printer's  devil  came  in  haste  from 


Browning  227 

Moxon's  shop  to  ask  for  some  copy  to  fill  up  the  sheet, 
and  Browning  gave  him  a  jeu  d' esprit  which  he  had 
lately  written  to  amuse  little  Willie  Macready.  This 
was  The  Pied  Piper  of  Hamlyn  which  has  introduced 
Browning's  name  to  thousands  of  houses  which  would 
otherwise  never  have  heard  of  him. 

Browning  had  now  found  a  public  who  both  read 
and  admired  him.  He  was  a  man  of  very  wide  know- 
ledge and  sympathies,  not  always  a  keen  observer,  but 
a  notorious  thinker.  His  friend  Mr.  Gosse  describes 
him  as  gifted  with  a  large  optimism,  a  warm  friend 
but  absolutely  ruthless  as  a  foe  or  when  he  thought  a 
snub  was  required. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  poetry  is  the  expression 
of  the  most  beautiful  thoughts  in  the  most  beautiful 
language.  This  is  simple  and  satisfying,  but  the 
definitions  of  poetry  given  by  modern  professors  seem 
to  be  both  difficult  to  grasp  and  inconclusive.  Mr. 
McKail  calls  poetry  "  patterned  language  "  and  says 
that  the  vital  function  of  poetry  is  to  make  patterns 
out  of  life.  This  does  not  help  us  much.  Words- 
worth's definition  that  "  poetry  is  the  breath  and 
finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge  "  is  far  better  and  cap- 
able of  more  universal  application  than  Shelley's 
dictum  that "  it  is  the  record  of  the  best  and  happiest 
moments  of  the  best  and  happiest  minds."  For  at 
the  most  this  is  but  half  true  and  could  hardly  be 
applied  to  his  own  great  poem  the  Cenci  at  all. 

Professor  Henry  Newbolt  told  the  Royal  Society 
of  Literature  lately  that  poetry  was  the  expression  of 
intuitions  or  perceptions,  the  work  of  the  aesthetic 
activity,  while  prose  was  the  expression  of  the 
thoughts  or  concepts  of  our  logical  and  scientific 
activity. 


228  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

This  rather  clumsy  definition  would  appear  to  mean 
that  poetiy  was  the  expression  of  beautiful  ideas  and 
that  prose  was  the  form  for  all  logical  or  reasoning 
processes  and  scientific  subjects.  This  is  obviously 
true  though  not  good  as  a  definition  which  should  be 
terse  and  clear  ;  but  it  does  deny  the  title  of  poetry  to 
much  of  the  psychological  reasoning  which  Brown- 
ing has  put  into  verse,  for  instance,  in  La  Saisiaz; 
though  in  Browning's  hands  it  is  impossible  that 
poetry  should  not  be  found  even  in  the  course  of  a 
metaphysical  disposition,  e.g. : — 

But  the  soul  is  not  the  body ;   and  the  breath  is  not  the 

flute, 

Both  together  make  the  music  :  either  marred  and  all  is 
mute. 

But  to  leave  definition,  and  come  to  the  Man. 

Browning  and  Tennyson,  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke 
points  out,  dominated  the  twin  peaks  of  Parnassus 
for  sixty  years,  and  he  proceeds  at  some  length  to  con- 
trast the  two.  I  don't  know  that  such  contrasts  are 
of  any  great  value.  But  he  easily  shows  how  entirely 
dissimilar  they  were,  in  that  Tennyson  was  essen- 
tially English,  Browning  entirely  cosmopolitan  and 
chiefly  Italian. 

Open  my  heart  and  you  will  see 
Graved  inside  of  it,  "  Italy." 
Such  lovers  old  are  I  and  she 
So  it  always  was,  so  shall  ever  be. 

He  adds  that  "  He  had  no  morbid  over-refinement ; 
indeed,  it  must  be  admitted  that  though  he  appre- 
ciated delicacy  the  processes  of  his  own  mind  were 
even  a  little  coarse/'  Perhaps  this  may  account  for 


Browning  229 

the  fact  that  in  his  passionate  love-poems  it  seems  to 
make  no  difference  to  him  whether  the  love  is  moral 
or  immoral.  In  his  friendships  he  was  generous  and 
impulsive,  and  to  a  single  listener  he  would  talk  in  a 
most  interesting  manner  about  his  own  poems,  and 
though  he  forgot  many  faces  and  persons  in  real  life 
his  own  poetic  creatures  were  always  absolutely  alive 
to  him,  and  he  would  defend  their  conduct,  if  criti- 
cized, with  genuine  warmth.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said 
that  his  poetic  creations  crowded  out  the  real  world 
to  a  serious  extent,  otherwise  we  might  have  had  more 
of  his  writing  that  the  ordinary  world  could  under- 
stand and  read  with  pleasure.  For  most  of  us,  how- 
ever Browningite  we  may  be,  must  agree  with  Tenny- 
son that  "  in  poetry  there  ought  to  be  lucidity  and 
some  melody,  it  should  not  be  all  thought." 

He  constantly  gives  us  a  minute  picture  of  an  Italian 
landscape,  A  Morning  at  Florence,  A  Sunset  at 
Verona,  and  that  magnificent  Sunrise  at  the  begin- 
ning of  Pippa  Passes.  In  almost  the  only  poem  he 
wrote  about  England — 

Oh,  to  be  in  England, 
Now  that  April's  there, 

Browning's  long  sojourn  in  Italy  has  made  him  ante- 
date the  English  Spring  and  allot  to  April  what  really 
in  England  belongs  to  May.  And  so,  while  Tennyson 
was  the  great  National  poet,  Browning  seldom  speaks 
as  an  Englishman.  The  scenes  he  describes  are 
abroad,  the  people  he  deals  with  and  the  stories  he 
illuminates  are  none  of  them  English,  even  the  brave 
deeds  he  describes  so  graphically  are  the  deeds  of 
foreigners.  Hence  it  comes  about  that  throughout 
all  his  poems  he  tells  us  nothing  of  the  great  changes 


230  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

of  thought  and  feeling  which  came  over  England  dur- 
ing the  sixty  years  of  his  life.  This  is  not  to  say  that 
he  did  not  enrich  the  English  language  with  some  of 
its  finest  passages.  But  it  suffices  to  explain  why  his 
admirers  must  be  in  the  words  of  Keats  "  a  little 
clan/'  Only  those  who  know  Italy  can  appreciate 
the  extraordinary  skill  with  which  he  depicts  the 
country  and  the  peasants  and  still  more  the  life  in 
Italian  towns ;  and  not  only  is  it  the  life  of  the  present 
day  that  he  shows  us,  but  scenes  historic  or  imagin- 
ative of  mediaeval  times  and  pictures  of  old-world 
life  among  Italians,  Germans,  Jews,  Arabs  are  all 
painted  with  the  proper  colouring,  surroundings  and 
atmosphere  in  a  manner  which  none  save  Shakespeare 
have  ever  equalled,  but  which  it  needs  a  special  educa- 
tion to  appreciate.  Instances  of  this  are  to  be  found 
everywhere,  notably  in  The  Englishman  in  Italy, 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  and  that  most  graphic  of  all 
his  poems,  The  Bishop  orders  his  Tomb  in  St.  Praxed's 
Church.  Another,  and  perhaps  the  chief  characteris- 
tic of  Browning,  both  of  the  man  and  his  writing,  is 
his  consistent  optimism,  and  a  faith  in  God  and 
humanity  which  he  is  never  tired  of  repeating. 

My  own  hope  is  a  sun  will  pierce 
The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched  ; 

That,  after  Last,  returns  the  First, 
Though  a  wide  compass  round  be  fetched  ; 

That  what  began  best,  can't  end  worst, 
Nor  what  God  blessed  once,  prove  accurst. 

Apparent  Failure. 

Or  again — 

All  we  have  willed  or  hoped,  or  dreamed  of  good  shall 

exist, 
Not  its  semblance  but  itself ;  no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor 

power 


Browning  231 

Whose    voice  has  gone  forth  but  each  survives  for   the 

Melodist 

When  Eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 
The  high  that  proved  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too 

hard, 

The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the  sky, 
Are  music  sent  up  to  God  by  the  lover  and  the  bard ; 
Enough  that  he  heard  it  once  :  we  shall  hear  it  by  and  by. 

Abt  Vogler. 

He  goes  so  far  in  the  same  poem  as  to  insist  even 
that  failure  is  not  simply  a  useful  discipline  or  an  in- 
centive to  more  successful  efforts,  but  a  herald  and 
even  a  guarantee  of  success. 

The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound ; 
What  was  good  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much  good 
more ; 

Or  again — 

What  is  our  failure  here  but  a  triumph's  evidence 
For  the  fullness  of  the  days  ? 

Abt  Vogler. 

But  we  must  never  give  up.    Life-long  struggle,  even 
if  it  seems  in  vain,  is  better  than  placid  content. 
In  his  fine  poem  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  he  tells  us  this — 

Then  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  each  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand,  but  go  ! 

Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain  ! 

Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang  ;  dare,  never  grudge  the  throe, 

For  thence — a  paradox 

Which  comforts  while  it  mocks — 
Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail  : 

What  I  aspired  to  be, 

And  was  not  comforts  me  ; 
A  brute  I  might  have  been,  but  would  not  sink  i'  the  scale. 

Later  in  the  poem  he  insists  that  God  will  take 
account  of  our  endeavours  as  much  as  of  our  deeds. 


232  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Not  on  the  vulgar  Mass 

Called  "  work  "  must  sentence  pass, 
Things  done,  that  took  the  eye  and  had  the  price  ; 

O'er  which  from  level  stand 

The  low  world  laid  its  hand, 
Found  straightway  to  its  mind,  could  value  in  a  trice. 

But  all,  the  world's  coarse  thumb 

And  finger  failed  to  plumb, 
So  passed  in  making  up  the  main  account  ; 

All  instincts  immature, 

All  purposes  unsure, 

That  weighed  not  as  his  work,  yet  swelled  the  man's 
amount : 

Thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed 

Into  a  narrow  act, 
Fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped  ; 

All  I  could  never  be, 

All  men  ignored  in  me 
This,  was  I  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the  pitcher  shaped. 

This  life-long  optimism  which  we  see  splendidly  ex- 
pressed in  Abt  Vogler  and  La  Sasiaz  was  to  Browning 
both  a  blessing  and  a  curse.  Through  it,  when  others 
were  battling  with  doubt  and  finally  overcoming,  he 
was  all  along  at  peace :  he  noted  the  discords,  but 
had  a  sure  and  certain  faith  that  all  must  come  right 
at  last. 

On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs,  in  the  heaven  the  perfect 
round, 

but  this  very  absence  of  doubt  and  struggle  through- 
out all  his  life  makes  his  life  less  interesting,  and  cer- 
tainly tends  to  make  his  teaching  monotonous. 

Pauline,  with  its  beautiful  description  of  the  old 
woods,  was  written*  when  Browning  was  20,  and  Para- 
celsus three  years  later,  and  already  his  doctrine  is 
fully  developed.  We  are  here  to  fit  ourselves  for  a 
future  life,  we  have  many  limitations  which  produce 


Browning  233 

failure,  but  it  is  good  that  it  should  be  so  as  it  pre- 
vents our  being  content  with  this  life  and  helps  to 
develop  the  divine  in  us  and  is  really  better  for  us 
than  earthly  success  would  be,  for  to  be  satisfied  with 
that  would  be  the  worst  of  failure,  as  he  says  in  the 
difficult  poem  Easter  Day,  for  he  harps  on  the  same 
string  throughout, 

Thou  art  shut 

Out  of  the  heaven  of  spirits ;  glut 
Thy  sense  upon  this  world  :  'tis  thine 
For  ever — take  it ! 

We  have  the  same  thought  again  in  The  Grammarian's 
Funeral,  that  the  future  alone  is  worth  considering. 

Earn  the  success  first.     God  surely  will  contrive 

Use  for  our  earning. 
Others  mistrust  and  say,  "  But  time  escapes 

Live  now  or  never  !  " 
He  said,  "  What's  time  ?     Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes  ! 

Man  has  forever." 

The  idea  that  perfection  is  unattainable  here  but 
must  still  be  striven  after  so  that  we  may  attain  it 
hereafter  is  carried  further  in  Paracelsus,  who  aims  at 
the  perfecton  of  Intellect  while  Aprile  hopes  for  the 
sum  of  love,  neither  of  which  can  be  attained  in  this 
world  of  limitations,  and  at  last  both  of  them  feel 
their  failure,  and  yet,  Browning  insists,  it  is  not 
failure  because  their  aims  at  perfection  were  right, 
their  mistakes  were  firstly,  to  expect  it  there,  and 
secondly,  to  think  that  their  failure  was  final  instead 
of  being  a  prophecy  of  greater  glory  to  come/1 

Matthew  Arnold  in  speaking  of  the  admirers  of 
Wordsworth  says  "  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against 
the  Wordsworthians.  They  are  apt  to  praise  him  for 
the  wrong  things  and  lay  far  too  much  stress  on  what 


234  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

they  call  his  philosophy,"  and  similarly  it  behoves  us 
to  beware  of  the  out  and  out  Browningite  who  usually 
praises  Browning  for  his  philosophy  and  his  theories 
of  life,  etc.,  but  really  Browning  is  no  philosopher  and 
his  theories  of  life  are  all  as  old  as  the  New  Testa- 
ment. After  all  I  take  it  that  what  we  turn  to  a 
poet  for  is  his  poetry,  and  his  noble  expression  of  great 
truths,  and  it  is  as  a  poet,  and  a  great  poet,  that  we  hail 
Robert  Browning .  The  writer  of  Saul,  oiAbt  Vogler, 
of  Karshish,  of  Prospice,  of  The  Bishop  ordering  his 
Tomb,  of  La  Saisaiz,  of  Pheidippides  and  Herve  Riel, 
to  say  nothing  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  has  done 
enough  for  immortality.  Besides  which  are  there 
not,  in  his  "Dramatic  Lyrics/'  The  Lost  Leader, 
Love  among  the  ruins,  How. they  brought  the  Good  News 
and  By  the  Fireside?  In  "Dramatis  Personae  " 
the  charming  little  bits,  May  and  Death,  Youth  and 
Art  and  Confessions  ? 

What  is  he  buzzing  in  my  ears  ? 

"  Now  that  I  come  to  die, 
Do  I  view  the  world  as  a  vale  of  tears  "  ? 

Ah,  reverend  sir,  not  I  ! 

And,  in  the  "  Dramatic  Romances/'  The  Patriot  and 
The  Gondola,  a  poem  full  of  beauty  and  passion,  and 
whose  theme  is  blended  of  Love  and  Death  and  Pity. 
As  is  not  unnatural  in  a  writer  whose  pen  was  at 
work  through  so  many  years,  his  later  writings,  those 
which  followed  his  mighty  effort,  The  Ring  and  the 
Book,  are  not  up  to  the  poetic  level  of  his  earlier  ones. 
With  the  exception  of  Pheidippides  the  two  series  of 
' '  Dramatic  Idylls  ' '  and  Jocoseria  add  little  or  nothing 
to  his  fame,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Ferishtah's 
Fancies  and  Parleyings  with  Certain  People,  and  all 
these  with  Asolando  were  published  in  the  last  decade 


Browning  235 

of  his  life.  I  agree  with  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke,  in 
thinking  that  some  of  the  earlier  poems  in  Asolando — 
Now,  Summum  Bonum,  and  the  two  following,  which 
breathe  of  the  passionate  love  of  youth — were  the 
work  of  his  early  days  long  laid  by.  But  just  as 
Crossing  the  Bar  was  one  of  Tennyson's  latest  poems 
so  in  the  Epilogue  to  Asolando  Browning  finishes  his 
life's  labour  with  as  fine  a  bit  of  writing  as  he  ever 
produced. 

EPILOGUE 

At  the  midnight  in  the  silence  of  the  sleep  time, 

When  you  set  your  fancies  free, 

Will   they    pass    to   where — by    death,  fools   think,    im- 
prisoned— 

Low  he  lies  who  once  so  loved  you,  whom  you  loved  so, — 
pity  me  ? 

Oh,  to  love  so,  be  so  loved,  yet  so  mistaken  ! 

What  had  I  on  earth  to  do 

With  the  slothful,  with  the  mawkish,  the  unmanly  ? 
Like  the  aimless,  helpless,  hopeless,  did  I  drivel 
— Being — who  ? 

One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast  forward 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would 

triumph, 

Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake. 

No,  at  Noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man's  worktime 

Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer  ! 

Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 
"  Strive  and  thrive  !  "  cry,  "  Speed — fight  on,  fare  for- 
ward 1  ever 

There  as  here  !  " 

There  remains  only  to  speak  of  Browning's  style. 
It  is  one  peculiarly  his  own  and  likely  to  remain  so, 

1  I  have  supplied  this  word  at  a  guess.     In  my  edition 
of  Asolando  the  printer  has  left  two  syllables  out  here. 


236  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

and  is  one  of  his  peculiarities  which  we  can  least 
admire.  The  others  are — 

His  choice  of  unworthy  or  of  unpoetic  subjects, 
His  perpetual  argument  and  analysis  of  motives, 
His  long-windedness, 

His  fantastic  tricks  of  rhyme  and  odd  arrange- 
ment of  words,  etc.,  and 
His  wilful  obscurity. 

All  these  defects  added  to  the  frequent  want  of 
melody  in  his  verse  obviously  detract  from  the  merit 
of  much  that  he  wrote ;  and  deprive  it  in  great 
measure  of  both  the  dignity  and  poetic  charm  which 
are  characteristics  of  all ' '  Great  Verse. ' '  In  his  revolt 
against  the  "  namby-pamby "  writers,  Browning 
went  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  rather  prided  him- 
self on  being  able  to  make  verse  on  the  most  unlikely 
subjects,  and  he  allowed  his  individuality  to  run  riot 
in  his  style.  He  did  not  care  what  the  world  in  general 
thought  of  his  poetry,  or  even  whether  the  world  in 
general  could  understand  him  or  even  read  him,  and 
what  was  worse  he  hardly  put  any  value  on  simplicity 
or  lucidity  but  revelled  in  his  power  of  doing  difficult 
things.  Hence  he  seems  often  to  put  a  value  on 
intellect  rather  than  feeling,  clever  writing  rather  than 
melody,  on  matter  rather  than  form.  But  why  could 
we  not  have  had  both  ?  His  grotesque  rhymes  in 
Pacchiarotto,  who  rhymes  to  "  paint-pot  O,"  and 
Abbot  to  "  Dab-pot/'  and  endless  others  such  as  we 
look  for  in  the  Ingoldsby  Legends  but  not  in  serious 
poetry,  the  numerous  tags  of  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin 
and  Italian,  the  absurd  list  of  rhymes  to  the  names  of 
Italian  painters  in  Old  Pictures  in  Florence,  ending 


Browning  237 

with  "  bag  'em  hot  "  to  rhyme  with  Witmagemot  are 
either  a  bad  joke  or  a  sort  of  insult  to  his  readers. 

Then  the  intellectual  subtlety,  the  minute  argu- 
ments, the  endless  use  of  parenthesis  within  paren- 
thesis, the  constant  putting  of  some  words  in  their 
wrong  places,  and  omission  of  other  words  which  the 
verse  requires,  the  leaving  out  of  the  article,  e.g., 
"  put  case  "  or  "  oped  heart,  flung  door  wide/'  and 
the  use  of  such  slang  expressions  as  "  tother,"  etc., 
all  tend  to  detract  from  the  dignity  of  the  verse  and  the 
pleasure  in  reading  it. 

Further,  besides  being  in  many  of  his  best  things 
extremely  obscure  and  his  arguments  very  difficult 
to  follow,  he  seems  at  times  to  take  delight  in  saying  a 
simple  thing  in  a  most  involved  and  unusual  manner; 
for  instance,  take  this  stanza  from  Popularity — 

Hobbs  hints  blue — straight  he  turtle  eats  : 
Nobbs  prints  blue — claret  crowns  his  cup  : 

Nokes  outdares  Stokes  in  azure  feats, — 
Both  gorge.     Who  fished  the  murex  up  ? 

What  porridge  had  John  Keats  ? 

This  is  an  instance  of  what  has  been  called  Browning's 
"  preciosity."  He  could  have  said  it  quite  differ- 
ently and  simply  but  he  chose  to  say  it  like  this. 

For  his  choice  of  subjects  unworthy  of  poetic  treat- 
ment look  at  The  Soliloquy  in  a  Spanish  Cloister,  at 
Hulbert  and  Hob  in  "  The  Dramatic  Idylls,"  at  Donald 
in  "  Jocoseria,"  at  Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium,  and  sub- 
jects in  The  Inn  Album  and  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap 
Country.  Of  this  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  in  his  chapter 
on  "  Womanhood  in  Browning,"  speaking  of  Ottima 
in  Pippa  Passes  says,  "  Then  the  subject-matter  is 
sordid.  Nothing  relieves  the  coarseness  of  Sebald, 
Ottima  and  Luca  and  their  relations  to  one  another, 


238  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

but  the  few  descriptions  of  Nature  and  the  happy  flash 
of  innocence  when  Pippa  passes  by.  Nor  are  there 
any  large  fates  behind  the  tale  or  large  effects  to  follow 
which  might  lift  the  crime  into  dignity.  This  mean, 
commonplace,  ugly  kind  of  subject  had  a  strange 
attraction  for  Browning  as  we  see  in  The  Inn  Album, 
in  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country  and  elsewhere/' 
Then  these  very  poems  are  so  long-winded :  Fifine  at 
the  Fair  covers  130  pages ;  Bp.  Blougram  runs  into 
1,000  lines  and  is  hardly  poetry.  In  Mr.  Sludge  the 
Medium  we  have  1,600  lines  of  sheer  prose,  while 
Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau  runs  to  85  pages  of  the 
dullest  prose.  Finally,  The  Inn  Album  covers  130 
pages  and  Red  Cotton  Night-cap  Country  170,  and  all 
singularly  deficient  in  poetic  beauty.  For  an  in- 
stance of  what  I  mean  by  prose,  take  the  following — 
From  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess — 

I  saddled  myself  the  very  palfrey 

I  remember  patting  while  it  carried  her, 

The  day  she  arrived  and  the  Duke  married  her. 

And,  do  you  know,  though  it's  easy  deceiving 

Oneself  in  such  matters,  I  can't  help  believing 

The  lady  had  not  forgotten  it  either. 

Of  course,  The  Ring  and  the  Book  is  far  longer  than 
any.  It  is  very  unequal  and  has  whole  books  in  which 
it  is  hard  to  find  any  real  poetry,  but  it  is  a  great  work 
and  has  many  fine  passages  in  it.  And  it  is  amaz- 
ingly clever,  for  certainly  only  Browning  of  all  poets 
ever  born,  could,  starting  with  so  poor  a  theme,  have 
told  the  same  story  twelve  times  over  as  he  has  done 
in  the  four  volumes  of  this  lengthy  poem  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  it  possible  to  read  it  through. 

Rossetti  relates  how  Carlyle,  wishing  to  say  some- 
thing pleasant  to  Browning  about  it,  called  it  "a 


Browning  239 

wonderful  book,  one  of  the  most  wonderful  poems  ever 
written  ;  I  re-read  it  all  through,  all  made  out  of  an 
Old  Bailey  story  that  might  have  been  told  in  ten 
lines  and  only  wants  forgetting/' 

His  portraits  of  men,  Guido,  Caponsacchi,  the 
Pope,  and  all  the  good  folk  of  Arezzo,  the  lawyer 
Hyacinthus  especially  and  his  family,  are  quite 
first-rate,  and  standing  far  above  them  all  is  the 
charming  Pompilia.  She  is  one  of  the  two  women 
folk  among  all  Browning's  creations  who  stand  out 
pre-eminent,  they  are  Pompilia,  so  natural  and  love- 
able  and  so  beautifully  different  from  all  her  sur- 
roundings, and  the  Greek  Girl,  Balaustion.  The  rest 
of  Browning's  women  do  not  take  hold  of  us,  as  all 
Shakespeare's  wonderful  creations  do,  but,  in  all  his 
work,  no  imaginary  woman  could  come  near  in  inter- 
est to  the  one  real  woman  for  whom  he  lived  and 
wrought,  whom  he  constantly  addresses  in  his  poems, 
and  to  whose  spirit  he  makes  that  passionate  cry 
at  the  end  of  the  Introduction  to  The  Ring  and  the 
Book. 


O  Lyric  Love,  half  angel  and  half  bird 

And  all  a  wonder  and  a  wild  desire, — 

Boldest  of  hearts  that  ever  braved  the  sun, 

Took  sanctuary  within  the  holier  blue, 

And  sang  a  kindred  soul  out  to  his  face — 

Yet  human  at  red-ripe  of  the  heart — 

When  the  first  summons  from  the  darkling  earth 

Reached  thee  amid  thy  chambers,  blanched  their  blue, 

And  bared  them  of  the  glory — to  drop  down, 

To  toil  for  man,  to  suffer  or  to  die, — 

This  is  the  same  voice  :  can  thy  soul  know  change  ? 

Hail  then  and  hearken  from  the  realms  of  help  ! 

Never  may  I  commence  my  song,  my  due 

To  God  who  best  taught  song  by  gift  of  thee, 

Except  with  bent  head  and  beseeching  hand — 

That  still  despite  the  distance  and  the  dark, 


240  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

What  was,  again  may  be ;  some  interchange 

Of  grace,  some  splendour  once  thy  very  thought, 

Some  benediction  anciently  thy  smile  : 

— Never  conclude,  but  raising  hand  and  head 

Thither  where  eyes,  that  cannot  reach,  yet  yearn 

For  all  hope,  all  sustainment,  all  reward, 

Their  utmost  up  and  on — so  blessing  back 

In  those  thy  realms  of  help,  that  heaven  thy  home, 

Some  whiteness  which,  I  judge,  thy  face  makes  proud, 

Some  wanness  where,  I  think,  thy  foot  may  fall  ! 

Just  before  that  passage  Browning  addresses  the 
British  public  as  "  Ye  who  like  me  not/'  But  was  not 
this  greatly  his  own  fault  ?  All  were  ready  to  admire 
his  great  personality  and  his  remarkable  poetic  gifts, 
but  he  would  not  often  write  in  such  a  way  that  they 
could  understand  him.  The  two  first  aims  of  a  great 
artist  in  words,  lucidity  and  melody,  he  constantly 
disregards,  and  if  we  take  the  well-known  definition 
of  poetry,  that  it  is  the  most  beautiful  thoughts  ex- 
pressed in  the  most  beautiful  language,  how  much  of 
his  writing  there  is  to  which  posterity  is  not  likely  to 
allow  the  name  of  poetry!  And  though  his  writings 
contain  some  of  the  best  work  of  the  age  and  much 
that  is  bound  to  be  immortal,  we  cannot  but  feel 
regret  that  he  was  so  careless  of  the  rules  of  his  art 
and  that  he  did  not  take  more  pains  to  express  his 
many  fine  thoughts  in  more  melodious  language. 

Had  he  thought  more  of  his  art  we  could  more 
easily  have  forgiven  his  obscurity,  for  obscure  he 
often  is.  His  uncle  used  to  tell  him  that  he  ought 
to  print  his  poems  as  official  documents  are  printed, 
with  a  wide  margin  for  notes  and  queries,  adding, 
"  Why  don't  you  print  your  poetry  in  the  usual  way 
and  then  at  the  side  say  what  it  means  ?  " 

But  obscurity  is  not  always  a  deterrent ;  for  we  are 
told  how  the  friend  of  an  author  once  brought  some  MS. 


Browning  241 

poems  to  the  Editor  of  Frazer  and  said  that  one  which 
described  a  picture  was  a  very  fine  poem.  This 
picture  was  not  understandable,  and  the  poem  made 
it  no  clearer,  but  that  it  was  a  very  fine  poem 
nevertheless. 


SONNET 

BY 

CANON  RAWNSLEY. 


AT  SOMERSBY 
Aug.  5,  1809 

The  whole  earth  rested,  only  through  the  air 
Full-breathed  of  rose  and  lime  I  heard  a  rill 
Tinkle  in  Holywell,  and  Stockwith  mill 
Sent  back  by  silent  meadows  music  rare. 
On  dewy  beech  and  lawn  lay  moonlight  fair, 
And  high  o'er  glimmering  corn  on  Tetford  hill 
The  level  Plow  with  all  its  stars  stood  still, 
As  if  the  heaven  itself  had  ceased  from  care. 
But  one  was  sleepless  ;  through  the  gates  of  pain 
A  little  life  came  wailing  to  its  home — 
A  life  that  brought  new  music  to  mankind, 
Music  to  bid  us  each  life's  purpose  find, 
Till  through  the  doors  of  sorrow — born  again — 
We  win  the  bourne  of  peace  from  whence  we  came. 

H.  D.  RAWNSLEY. 
August  6,  1909. 


1809-1892 

TENNYSON  CENTENARY      ; 
AUGUST  6,  1909 

IN  one  of  the  prettiest  parts  of  the  Lincoln  Wolds, 
about  half  way  between  Alford — six  miles  off  on  the 
east — and  Horncastle  on  the  west,  and  almost  the 
same  distance  to  the  south-west  from  Spilsby  and 
Halton,  the  homes  of  Tennyson's  intimate  friends, 
the  Franklins  and  Rawnsleys,  in  a  valley  almost 
surrounded  by  hills,  lies  the  picturesque  little 
village  of  Somersby.  Hither  in  June  1808  came 
Mr.  Tennyson,  as  Rector  of  the  parish,  with  his 
wife  and  their  son  Frederick  (George,  the  eldest, 
had  died  in  infancy),  and  here  in  July  1808 
was  born  Charles,  and  in  1809  Alfred.  He  is 
entered  in  the  baptismal  register  of  August  8, 
in  his  father's  neat  small  handwriting,  as  "  Alfred, 
son  of  George  Clayton  and  Elizabeth  Tennyson, 
baptized,  born  August  6th." 

The  figure  "  6  "  looks  at  first  sight  like  a  5, 
but  certainly  is  a  6,  and  though  the  poet  always 
declared  that  he  was  born  a  few  minutes  before 
midnight,  whilst  as  yet  it  was  August  5,  his  birth- 
day was  always  reckoned  from  the  first  morning  of 
his  life,  August  6,  1809.  The  Doctor  and  his 
wife  lived  at  Somevsby  for  twenty-three  years,  and 


244  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

all  the  rest  of  the  children  were  born  there,  in  the 
following  order : — Mary  and  Emily,  Edward, 
Arthur  and  Septimus  (the  seventh  son),  Matilda, 
Cecilia  and  Horatio.  Of  all  these,  Matilda  alone 
is  left  to-day,  Cecilia  having  died  on  March  18, 
1909,  in  her  ninety-second  year. 

Cecilia  married  Professor  Edmund  Lushington, 
and  his  wedding  day  is  for  ever  celebrated  in  the 
last  canto  of  In  Memoriam.  Emily's  memory  is 
enshrined  in  the  same  immortal  work,  as  the  be- 
trothed of  Arthur  Hallam.  She  afterwards  became 
Mrs.  Jesse,  died  in  1887  ;  and  Mary,  who  always 
said  she  had  no  opinion  of  men,  also  married  and 
went  out  to  Antigua  as  Mrs.  Ker.  Writing  to  a 
great  friend  at  Somersby  she  says  : 

"O,  my  beloved  darling,  what  creatures  men  are. 
My  brothers  are  the  exceptions  to  this  general  rule. " 

Writing  again  to  the  same  lady,  after  she  had 
become  Mrs.  Ker,  she  says — 

"  Since  I  have  had  some  talk  with  Mrs.  Henry,  I 
find  it  is  her  opinion,  from  experience,  that  all  men 
with  very  few  exceptions  are  given  to  very  shifty 
ways  ;  not  half  so  good  and  upright  as  women." 
Charles,  who  took  the  name  of  Tennyson-Turner,  is 
most  closely  associated  with  Alfred,  as  they  were 
the  chief  authors  of  the  Poems  by  Two  Brothers, 
published  in  1827,  though,  even  in  that  volume, 
Frederick,  who  was  the  best  scholar  of  them  all, 
had,  if  not  a  hand,  at  least  a  finger  in  the  pie  ;  and 
the  bond  between  Charles  and  Alfred  was  drawn 
tighter  by  their  eventually  marrying  sisters,  Louisa 
and  Emily  Sellwood,  of  Horncastle.  Charles 
wrote  that  on  the  day,  when  their  first  volume 
appeared  in  print  they  hired  a  conveyance  and 


Tennyson  Centenary  245 

drove  off  to  the  sea  at  their  beloved  Mablethorpe, 
where  they  shared  their  triumph  with  the  winds  and 
waves,  shouting  themselves  hoarse  on  the  shore 
as  they  rolled  out  poem  after  poem  in  one  another's 
ears.  He  adds  :  "  I  think  that  if  any  one  had  met 
us  they  would  have  thought  us  out  of  our  minds, 
and  in  a  way  I  think  that  day  we  were  indeed  beside 
ourselves  with  joy/'  Charles,  who  married  in  1837, 
became  Vicar  of  Grasby  in  Lincolnshire,  and  died 
on  April  25,  1879,  his  wife  following  him  within  a 
month.  His  sonnets,  published  at  intervals  from 
1830  to  1880,  were  some  of  them  of  great  beauty, 
notably  No.  206  of  his  Collected  Sonnets  called 
Letty's  Globe. 

When  Letty  had  scarce  passed  her  third  glad  year, 

And  her  young  artless  words  began  to  flow, 

One  day  we  gave  the  child  a  coloured  sphere 

Of  the  wide  earth,  that  she  might  mark  and  know, 

By  tint  and  outline,  all  its  sea  and  land. 

She  patted  all  the  world ;  old  empires  peeped 

Between  her  baby  ringers  ;  her  soft  hand 

Was  welcome  at  all  frontiers.     How  she  leaped 

And  laugh'd  and  prattled  in  her  world-wide  bliss ; 

But  when  we  turned  her  sweet  unlearned  eye 

On  our  own  isle  she  raised  a  joyful  cry, 

"  Oh  !  yes,  I  see  it,  Letty's  home  is  there  !  " 

And,  while  she  hid  all  England  with  a  kiss, 

Bright  over  Europe  fell  her  golden  hair. 

Frederick  outlived  all  his  brothers.  He  was 
the  author  of  a  volume  of  poems  called  Days  and 
Hours,  published  in  1834,  and  many  years  later,  in 
1890,  of  The  Isles  of  Greece,  of  which  the  Laureate, 
asking  me  if  I  had  read  it,  said  that  there  was  some 
very  good  verse  in  it ;  and  in  1896  he  sent  me  his 
last  volume  called  Poems  of  the  Day  and  Year, 
of  which  he  had  had  twenty- five  volumes  bound  in 


246  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

vellum  for  presentation  to  his  friends.  He  was 
ninety  when  he  published  this  volume,  and  it  is 
full  of  poetic  beauty.  Listen,  for  instance,  to  the 
first  stanza  of  the  poem  called  The  Skylark  and 
the  Poet. 

How  the  blythe  lark  runs  up  the  golden  stair 

That  leads  through  cloudy  gates  from  Heaven  to  Earth, 
And  all  alone  in  the  empyreal  air 

Fills  it  with  jubilant  sweet  songs  of  mirth  ! 
How  far  he  seems,  how  far 

With  the  light  upon  his  wings  ! 
Is  it  a  bird  or  star 

That  shines  and  sings  ? 1 

His  portrait  at  the  beginning  of  the  volume  shows 
his  fine  forehead  and  face.  He  had  bright  blue 
eyes,  a  great  contrast  to  the  dark  Spaniard-like 
colouring  of  the  rest  of  the  family. 

A  clergyman,  though  holding  four  benefices  at 
once,  having  a  family  of  eleven  to  bring  up,  would 
naturally  feel  the  res  angusta  domi,  and  though 
Frederick  went  to  Eton,  where  he  became  Captian 
of  the  Oppidans,  the  rest  of  the  boys  could  not  all 
expect  more  teaching  than  the  Grammar  School 
of  the  neighbouring  town  of  Louth  could  supply, 
which  was  however  plentifully  augmented  by  the 
learning  and  the  teaching  ability  of  their  father. 

In  a  letter  dated  "  Tuesday,  28,  1826,"  to  my 
grandfather,  who  had  asked  him  to  dine,  Dr. 
Tennyson  says — 

"  You  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  but  warm  your 
shins  over  the  fire  while  I  am  frozen  or  suffocated 
with  Greek  and  Latin." 

1  This  is  printed  in  a  little  volume  published  in  Oxford 
called  The  Time  of  the  Singing  of  Birds. 


Tennyson  Centenary  247 

Alfred  stayed  at  Louth  with  his  grandmother 
Mrs.  Fytche,  and  went  to  the  day  school  when  he 
was  seven  years  old,  but  he  hated  it,  and  left  it 
with  pleasure  for  home-teaching  in  1820.  The 
Doctor  had  a  good  library,  and  the  whole  family 
were  great  readers.  The  boys  studied  the  classics 
with  their  father,  and  worked  at  modern  languages 
with  their  mother  ;  nor  were  mathematics  and 
natural  science  or  music  and  dancing  omitted. 

For  eight  years  Alfred  and  Charles  studied  at 
home,  gaining  an  irregular  but  doubtless  a  wider 
and  more  varied  education  than  they  would  have 
obtained  at  any  public  school.  In  1828  they  went 
to  Trinity,  Cambridge,  where  Frederick  was  al- 
ready a  distinguished  Greek  scholar  and  a  Univer- 
sity prizeman.  At  Cambridge,  Alfred's  remarkable 
appearance,  his  grand  head,  his  splendid  physique, 
and  the  union  of  strength  with  refinement,  struck 
all  who  saw  him.  Thompson,  who  afterwards 
became  Master  of  Trinity,  on  his  first  appearance 
in  Hall,  exclaimed,  "  That  man  must  be  a  poet." 
He  was  fortunate  in  having  a  rare  set  of  intimate 
friends,  including  Spedding,  Monckton-Milnes, 
Trench,  Alford,  Brookfield,  Blakesley,  Thompson, 
Stephen  Spring-Rice,  Merivale,  Kemble,  Heath, 
Buller,  Tennant,  Monteith  and  Arthur  Hallam. 

He  was  soon  made  a  member  of  the  very  exclu- 
sive Cambridge  Conversazione  Society,  which, 
being  limited  to  twelve,  was  called  "  The  Apostles," 
of  which  Frederick  Maurice  was  the  creator,  and 
of  which  Hallam  writes  in  a  letter  to  Gladstone  : 
"  the  effects  produced  on  the  minds  of  many  at 
Cambridge  by  the  single  creation  of  that  Society  of 
'  Apostles '  is  far  greater  than  I  dare  to  calculate, 


248  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

and  will  be  felt  both  directly  and  indirectly  in  the 
age  that  is  upon  us."  All  of  them  were  full  of 
enthusiasm  for  literature,  and  for  the  Modern 
Schools  of  thought,  and  full  of  admiration  for 
poetry,  especially  that  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Keats,  Shelley  and  Byron,  though  his  "  comet 
blaze  "  was  already  on  the  wane. 

He  had  died  in  April  1824,  and  nothing  had 
ever  moved  the  fifteen-year-old  boy,  Alfred  Tenny- 
son, so  much  as  the  news  of  his  death.  For  he 
tells  us  that  when  a  lad  he  was  possessed  by  Byron  ; 
later  in  life  he  could  not  read  him.  But  at  this 
time  he  felt  stunned,  and  as  if  the  whole  world 
were  darkened  for  him,  and  he  could  only  retire 
into  the  Holywell  Wood  at  Somersby  and  cut  with 
his  knife  in  the  Greensand  rock,  "  Byron  is  dead." 
Many  years  later  he  said  to  me  that  Byron  had 
passed  out  of  his  great  popularity  too  entirely, 
but  that  he  thought  he  would  come  into  favour 
again. 

As  early  as  1829  Arthur  Hallam,  writing  to 
Gladstone,  said,  "  I  consider  Tennyson  as  promis- 
ing fair  to  be  the  greatest  poet  of  our  generation, 
perhaps  of  our  century."  The  friends  had  intended 
to  produce  a  joint  volume,  but  Hallam  withdrew 
and  in  the  year  1830  Tennyson's  first  volume,  called 
Poems  chiefly  Lyrical,  came  out.  Most  of  the  poems 
had  been  written  while  he  was  at  Cambridge ;  in  two 
of  them  he  refers  to  his  friend  Blakesley,  after- 
wards Dean  of  Lincoln,  whom  he  addressed  in  one 
as  "  Clearheaded  Friend,"  in  the  other  as  "  Dark- 
browed  Sophist."  The  two  poems  which  attracted 
most  attention  were  Mariana  and  Arabian  Nights, 
but  the  volume  also  contained  The  Merman  and 


Tennyson  Centenary  249 

Mermaid,  The  Dying  Swan,  The  Ode  to  Memory, 
and  the  Song  which  begins — 

A  spirit  haunts  the  year's  last  hours 
Dwelling  amid  these  yellowing  bowers  : 
To  himself  he  talks. 

These  two,  but  the  Ode  to  Memory  especially,  treat 
of  the  old  home  at  Somersby  and  the  little  sea-coast 
village  of  Mablethorpe.  The  lines  about  his  home 
are  as  follows — 

Come  forth,  I  charge  thee,  arise, 
Divinest  Memory  ! 

Come  from  the  woods  that  belt  the  grey  hill-side, 

The  seven  elms,  the  poplars  four 

That  stand  beside  my  father's  door, 

And  chiefly  from  the  brook  that  loves 

To  purl  o'er  matted  cress  and  ribbed  sand, 

Or  dimple  in  the  dark  of  rushy  coves, 

Drawing  into  his  warm  earthen  urn, 

In  every  elbow  and  turn, 

The  filtered  tribute  of  the  rough  woodland. 

O  !  hither  lead  thy  feet  ! 
Pour  round  mine  ears  the  livelong  bleat 
Of  the  thick  fleeced  sheep  from  wattled  folds, 

Upon  the  ridged  wolds, 

When  the  first  matin-song  hath  waken'd  loud 
Over  the  dark  dewy  earth  forlorn, 
What  time  the  amber  morn 
Forth  gushes  from  beneath  a  low-hung  cloud. 

Those  last  lines  have  a  ring  of  Milton  in  them,  of 
whom  he  was  always  a  great  admirer.  Later,  in 
his  poem  to  Memory,  he  says — 

Artist-like, 

Ever  retiring  thou  dost  gaze 
On  the  prime  labour  of  thine  early  days  : 
No  matter  what  the  sketch  might  be  ; 
Whether  the  high  field  on  the  bushless  Pike, 


250  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Or  even  a  sand-built  ridge 

Of  heaped  hills  that  mound  the  sea, 

Overblown  with  murmurs  harsh, 

Or  even  a  lowly  cottage  whence  we  see 

Stretched  wide  and  wild  the  waste  enormous  marsh, 

Where  from  the  frequent  bridge, 

Emblems  or  glimpses  of  eternity, 

The  trenched  waters  run  from  sky  to  sky. 

He  is  here  speaking  of  Mablethorpe,  a  little  sea- 
coast  village  close  to  the  sandhills  which  keep  out 
the  sea  from  the  Marsh ;  and  please  note  that  the 
marsh  is  not  a  bog  but  a  belt  of  rich  pasture  land, 
five  to  seven  miles  wide  with  no  hedges  or  trees, 
but  divided  into  fields  by  "  dykes  "  full  of  water, 
and  extending  along  the  line  of  the  coast  from 
Boston  to  Grimsby. 

In  these  early  poems  the  accented  last  syllable  of 
the  past  participle  trenched,  heaped,  ridged, 
thick  fleeced,  and  ribbed,  abounds  ;  in  his  later 
work  it  never  occurs.  In  the  little  poem  We  are 
Free,  which  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  1830  volume, 
you  will  notice  the  same  thing. 

The  winds,  as  at  their  hour  of  birth 

Leaning  upon  the  ridged  sea, 
Breathed  low  around  the  rolling  earth 

With  mellow  preludes  "  We  are  free." 
The  streams  through  many  a  lilied  row 

Down  carolling  to  the  crisped  sea, 
Low-tinkled  with  a  bell-like  flow 

Atween  the  blossoms,  "  We  are  free." 

Certainly  with  him  early  impressions  were 
ineffaceable  ;  and,  though  after  he  became  Poet 
Laureate  he  lived  all  his  life  in  the  South  of  England 
he  loved  to  see  Lincolnshire  faces  and  to  hear  of 
Lincolnshire,  and  to  talk  the  Doric  dialect,  in 


Tennyson  Centenary  251 

which  he    wrote    The   Northern  Farmer   and  his 
subsequent  Lincolnshire  Poems. 

Two  other  poems  in  the  1830  volume,  which  are 
never  seen  now,  are  worthy  of  praise  :  Hero  and 
Leander  and  lines  To  a  Lady  Sleeping.  The  latter 
runs  thus  : 

O  Thou  whose  fringed  lids1  I  gaze  upon, 

Through  whose  dim  brain  the  winge"d  dreams  are  borne, 

Unroof  the  shrines  of  clearest  vision, 

In  honour  of  the  silver-flecked  morn  : 

Long  hath  the  white  wave  of  the  virgin  light 

Driven  back  the  billow  of  the  dreamful  dark. 

Thou  all  unwittingly  prolongest  night, 

Though  long  ago  listening  the  poised  lark 

With  eyes  dropped  downward  through  the  blue  serene, 

Over  heaven's  parapets  the  angels  lean. 

Hero  and  Leander  is  an  impassioned  appeal  of  the 
lady  to  her  lover  to  stay  with  her  and  not  attempt 
to  swim  the  Hellespont  that  night,  a  feat  in  which 
he  eventually  lost  his  life.  As  no  one  ever  sees 
this  poem  now,  I  will  quote  the  first  stanza. 

HERO  TO  LEANDER. 

Oh  go  not  yet,  my  love, 

The  night  is  dark  and  vast ; 
The  white  moon  is  hid  in  her  heaven  above 

And  the  waves  climb  high  and  fast. 
Oh  !  kiss  me,  kiss  me,  once  again, 

Lest  thy  kiss  should  be  the  last. 
Oh  kiss  me  ere  we  part ; 
Grow  closer  to  my  heart. 
My  heart  is  warmer  surely  than  the  bosom  of  the  main. 

O  joy  !  O  bliss  of  blisses  ! 

My  heart  of  hearts  art  thou. 
Come  bathe  me  with  thy  kisses, 

My  eyelids  and  my  brow. 
Hark  how  the  wild  rain  hisses 

And  the  loud  sea  roars  below. 


1  The  fringe" d  curtain  of  thine  eye  advance. 

Shakespeare,  Tempest,  I.  2. 


252  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

It  is  more  like  Byron  than  anything  else  in  his 
poems,  and  is  a  lyric  of  considerable  beauty  and 
power.  But  he  never  included  it  in  subsequent 
editions,  and  no  doubt  he  had  his  reasons ; 
possibly  he  considered  it  too  Byronic. 

Tennyson  had  started  with  Arthur  Hallam  for 
the  Pyrenees  in  that  year  (1830),  and  the  beautiful 
poem  (Enone  was  begun  in  the  Vale  of  Cauteretz  in 
the  Pyrenees  about  which  he  wrote  that  touching 
poem  when  he  revisited  the  valley  two  and  thirty 
years  later  with  Arthur  Clough.  It  is  in  the  Enoch 
Arden  volume  which  was  published  in  1864. 

All  along  the  Valley,  stream  that  flashest  white, 

Deepening  thy  voice  with  the  deepening  of  the  night, 

All  along  the  Valley,  where  thy  waters  flow, 

I  walked  with  one  I  loved  two  and  thirty  years  ago. 

All  along  the  Valley,  while  I  walked  to-day, 

The  two  and  thirty  years  were  a  mist  which  rolls  away ; 

For  all  along  the  Valley,  down  thy  rocky  bed, 

Thy  living  voice  to  me  was  as  the  voice  of  the  dead, 

And  all  along  the  Valley,  by  rock  and  cave  and  tree, 

The  voice  of  the  Dead  was  a  living  voice  to  me. 

In  my  brother's  book,  Memories  of  the  Tenny- 
sons,  is  a  photograph  of  a  sketch  taken  in  1830 
on  the  steamer  Leeds,  by  which  they  returned 
from  Bordeaux,  in  which  Arthur  Hallam  is  shown 
lying  on  the  deck  with  Alfred  Tennyson  and 
Robertson  Glasgow  and  one  other,  reading  to  the 
wife  and  daughters  of  the  artist  the  last  new  Waver- 
ley  Novel.  One  of  the  daughters,  Mrs.  Clay, 
from  whom  I  have  had  a  full  account  of  this,  died 
in  January  1908,  in  Ambleside,  aged  94. 

Alfred,  Charles  and  Hallam  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge, but,  in  February  1831,  the  Tennysons  were 
summoned  to  attend  their  father,  who  was  far 


Tennyson  Centenary  253 

from  well,  and  on  March  16  he  passed  away  as  he 
sat  in  his  chair,  at  the  age  of  52. 

We  all  know  what  a  huge  trade  is  done  by  the 
owners  of  the  North  Sea  fishing  fleets  at  Grimsby, 
and  how  large  and  busy  a  place  it  has  long  been. 
So  it  is  curiously  interesting  to  read  on  Dr.  Tenny- 
son's tomb  in  Somersby  Churchyard  the  words, 
"  Rector  of  this  parish,  of  Bag  Enderby  and  Beni- 
worth,  and  Vicar  of  Great  Grimsby  in  this  county  " 
— and  that  but  eighty  years  ago. 

After  this  Alfred  did  not  return  to  Cambridge 
for  his  degree,  but  lived  at  home,  and  they  were 
able  to  keep  the  Somersby  home  for  another  six 
years  before  the  incoming  Rector  required  it. 

Mrs.  Tennyson  was  two  years  younger  than  her 
husband,  and  she  lived  to  be  84,  and  died  in  1865. 
She  was  small,  dark-eyed  and  highly  sensitive. 
Alfred  tells  us  that  she  was  frightened  to  death  of 
a  thunderstorm,  and  Mary  breaks  off  in  the  middle 
of  a  letter,  dated,  March  1851,  with  "  It  thunders, 
and  I  must  go  and  see  how  Mammy  gets  on."  She 
often  writes  of  her  as  "  the  little  mother,"  or 
"  the  dear  innocent  little  mother,"  and  the  poem 
in  the  1830  volume  called  Isabel  is  descriptive 
of  her,  and  speaks  of  her  gentle  voice,  her  keen 
intellect,  her 

Sweet  lips  whereon  perpetually  did  reign 
The  summer  calm  of  golden  charity, 

and  her 

locks  not  wide-dispread, 
Madonna- wise  on  either  side  her  head. 

You  will  see  this  in  her  picture  in  my  brother's 
book,  Memories  of  the  Tennysons,  a  small  book  and 


254  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

out  of  print  now,  but  which  I  think  lovers  of 
Tennyson  would  find  very  interesting. 

Nothing  seems  to  have  stopped  the  flow  from 
his  pen  at  this  time.  Perpetual  idleness  he  used  to 
say  must  be  one  of  the  punishments  of  Hell. 
The  1830  volume  was  quickly  followed  in  Decem- 
ber 1832  by  a  volume  called  Poems — dated  1833— 
which  were  an  immense  advance,  and  contained 
some  work  which  he  never  surpassed.  The  Lady 
of  Shalott,  The  Palace  of  Art,  The  Miller's 
Daughter,  GEnone,  The  May  Queen,  and  New  Year's 
Eve,  The  Lotus  Eaters,  A  Dream  of  Fair  Women, 
and  the  Lines  to  James  Spedding  on  the  death  of 
his  brother  Edward.  Think  of  all  those  wonderful 
poems  in  a  small  volume  of  162  pages,  written 
before  he  was  23. 

Touching  The  May  Queen,  there  is  an  interesting 
letter  in  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford  in  which 
Tennyson  vindicates  himself  from  the  charge  of 
making  the  white-thorn  blossom  grow  on  the 
blackthorn  tree.  "  I,  who  have  lived  all  my  life 
in  the  country,  must  surely  know  the  difference 
between  the  Blackthorn  and  the  May  thorn." 

Yet  the  last  line  of  Stanza  2,  in  the  New  Year's 
Eve,  in  the  1832  volume,  has 

And  the  New  Year's  coming  up,  Mother,  but  I  shall  never 

see 
The  may  upon  the  blackthorn,  the  leaf  upon  the  tree. 

"  The  May  "  simply  stands  here  for  the  bloom  or 
flower.  In  the  1842  volume  it  is  altered  to  The 
blossom  on  the  blackthorn,  and  the  third  part,  The 
Conclusion,  is  added,  beginning 


Tennyson  Centenary  255 

I  thought  to  pass  away  before,  and  yet  alive  I  am, 
And  in  the  fields  all  round  I  hear  the  bleating  of   the 
lamb. 

With  regard  to  The  Miller's  Daughter,  there  was  a 
copy  of  Volume  I  of  the  1842  edition  of  these 
poems  on  view  at  the  Tennyson  Centenary  Exhibi- 
tion in  London,  lent  by  Mr.  T.  J.  Wise,  which 
contains  three  or  four  of  the  cancelled  stanzas  of 
the  1833  volume,  written  on  the  fly  leaves  by  the 
Poet  himself.  One  of  these  is  very  pretty,  and  is 
given  in  the  first  volume  of  The  Memoir  by  his 
son  ;  it  runs  thus  : 

I  heard,  or  I  have  seemed  to  hear, 

When  all  the  under  air  was  still, 
The  low  voice  of  the  glad  New  Year 

Call  to  the  freshly-flowered  hill. 
I  heard,  as  I  have  often  heard, 

The  nightingale  in  leafy  woods 
Call  to  its  mate,  when  nothing  stirred 

To  left  or  right  but  falling  floods. 

The  poem,  as  printed,  has  just  a  reminiscence  of 
this  stanza  in  the  word  "  freshly-flowered." 
Another,  which  had  never  been  republished  until 
the  appearance  of  the  annotated  edition  of  the 
poems  in  1908,  is  this — 

That  slope  beneath  the  chestnut  tall 

Is  woo'd  with  choicest  breaths  of  air, 
Methinks  that  I  could  tell  you  all 

The  cowslips  and  the  kingcups  there, 
Each  coltsfoot  down  the  grassy  bent 

Whose  round  leaves  hold  the  gathered  shower, 
Each  quaintly  folded  cuckoo-pint 

And  silverpaly  cuckoo  flower. 

In  1832  every  enthusiastic  lover  of  poetry  at 
Cambridge  was  reading  to  his  friends  The  Palace 
of  Art  and  The  Dream  of  Fair  Women,  The  Lotus 


256  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Eaters,  The  Lady  of  Shalott,  and  CEnone,  with  those 
wonderful  lines  from  CEnone  beginning 

Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
These  three  alone  lead  life  to  sovereign  power. 

In  the  1832  volume  however  this  reads  differently— 

Self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control, 
Are  the  three  hinges  of  the  gates  of  Life, 
That  open  into  power,  every  way 
Without  horizon,  bound  or  shadow  or  cloud. 

"  The  three  hinges  of  the  gates  of  Life  "  is  an  image 
which  one  is  sorry  to  have  lost ;  but  the  Poet 
perhaps  rightly  judged  that  to  get  into  one  line 
what  was  in  the  first  edition  spread  over  three  lines 
was  an  advantage. 

It  was  the  same  at  Oxford  as  at  Cambridge. 
Dean  Liddell  once  told  me  that  there  never  was  a 
pleasure  in  the  world  equal  to  that  of  getting  a 
few  of  one's  intimate  friends  together  and  reading 
this  new  volume  of  Tennyson's  round  the  fire  in 
one  another's  rooms  at  night.1 

Even  the  1830  volume  had  had  many  ardent 
admirers.  Charles  Kingsley,  himself  a  poet,  wrote 
in  1850  :  "  Some  of  our  readers  we  would  fain 
hope  remember  as  an  era  in  their  lives  the  first 
day  on  which  they  read  these  earlier  poems,  how 
Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange,  The  Dying  Swan, 
The  Lady  of  Shalott,  etc.,  came  to  them  as  revela- 
tions. They  seemed  to  themselves  to  have  found  at 

1  I  mentioned  this  in  a  lecture  at  Carlisle,  and  a  gentle- 
man came  up  to  me  afterwards  and  said  how  true  the 
statement  was  ;  he  had  himself  been  one  of  those  who  used 
to  read  each  new  volume  as  it  came  out,  and  the  delight 
with  which  they  devoured  them  was  one  of  the  joys  of  life 
which  could  never  be  forgotten. 


Tennyson  Centenary  257 

last  a  poet  who  promised  not  only  to  combine  the 
cunning  melody  of  Moore,  the  rich  fullness  of  Keats, 
and  the  simplicity  of  Wordsworth,  but  one  who  was 
introducing  a  method  of  observing  nature  different 
from  that  of  all  the  three,  and  yet  succeeding  in 
everything  which  they  had  attempted  often  in 
vain/' 

Thus,  in  spite  of  adverse  criticism,  friends  and 
admirers  in  fast  increasing  numbers  were  devouring 
the  poems,  not  only  at  Cambridge  and  Oxford, 
but  wherever  men  of  culture  foregathered.  Nor 
was  it  on  grown  up  men  alone  that  Tennyson's 
poems  made  these  deep  impressions.  Another 
writer,  Mr.  J.  C.  Watson,  had  the  1842  volume  put 
into  his  hands  when  he  was  a  boy  of  twelve  ;  he 
opened  on  Locksley  Hall,  and  "  Never  shall  I  for- 
get/' he  says,  "  the  thrill,  the  ecstasy  with  which 
I  read  and  re-read  the  passionate  lines.  New 
feelings  of  ardour  were  aroused  in  me,  my  mind 
seemed  to  open  to  splendid  revelations,  and  I 
realized  the  intense  truth  of  Keats'  declaration  on 
first  '  looking  into  '  Chapman's  Homer. 

Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken." 

But  for  all  this  the  two  earlier  volumes  met  with  a 
good  deal  of  hard  criticism,  being  treated,  says 
James  Spedding,  as  sufficiently  notable  to  be  worth 
some  not  unelaborate  ridicule. 

1831,  the  year  after  their  return  from  the 
Pyrenees,  saw  Arthur  Hallam  much  at  Somersby, 
for  he  had  been  attached  to  Alfred's  sister  Emily 
since  1829, an(^  m  I^3I  they  were  formally  engaged. 
He  taught  her  Italian,  and,  as  the  family  were 

s 


258  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

never  without  books  in  their  hands  and  had  the 
admirable  custom  of  reading  the  best  authors 
aloud,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Chaucer,  Spenser  and 
Campbell  gave  place  when  Arthur  Hallam  was  with 
them  to  Dante,  Petrarch,  Tasso  and  Ariosto. 
Hallam  writes  that  this  engagement  is,  "  I  fervently 
hope,  only  the  commencement  of  a  union  which 
circumstances  may  not  impair  and  the  grave 
itself  may  not  conclude/'  Alas !  this  was  not  to  be. 
In  1833  Arthur  Hallam  went  abroad  with  his  father. 
They  had  reached  Vienna  when  his  father,  on 
returning  from  a  walk,  found  Arthur  apparently 
asleep  on  the  sofa.  But  a  blood  vessel  near  the 
brain  had  burst :  "  God's  finger  touched  him  and 
he  slept."  This  was  on  September  15,  1833. 
He  was  only  22,  but  acknowledged  by  all  who 
knew  him  to  be  a  man  of  amazing  powers,  and  of 
singular  charm.  Gladstone  speaks  of  him  as 
far  ahead  of  every  one  he  knew  at  Eton  ;  and  at 
Cambridge  Milnes  wrote  that  Thirlwall  was  capti- 
vated by  him,  and  adds,  "He  is  the  only  man 
here  of  my  own  standing  before  whom  I  bow  in 
conscious  inferiority  in  everything/'  Alford  said, 
"  He  had  a  wonderful  mind,  and  knowledge  on  all 
subjects  hardly  credible  at  his  age,"  and  "  he  was 
of  the  most  tender,  affectionate  disposition." 
Tennyson's  opinion  of  him  is  contained  in  In 
Memoriam.  "  The  man  I  held  as  half  divine/' 
The  blow  was  a  terrible  one  to  him  and  his  sister. 
But  he  turned  to  work  as  a  solace  and  wrote  The 
Two  Voices,  and  began  his  sections  of  In  Memoriam 
within  two  months  of  Arthur's  death,  with  "  Fair 
ship  that  from  the  Italian  shore  "  ;  and  the  canto, 
"  With  trembling  fingers  did  we  weave/'  was  the 


Tennyson  Centenary  259 

work  of  the  following  December  (1834).  The  rest 
occupied  him  sixteen  years.  The  shock  almost 
killed  Emily  ;  and,  but  that  he  had  her  to  tend, 
Alfred  said  that  he  would  gladly  have  died  too. 

In  1835  he  was  with  the  Speddingsat  Mirehouse, 
on  Lake  Bassenthwaite,  where  he  met  Edward 
FitzGerald,  his  great  friend  for  the  next  eight  and 
forty  years. 

In  1885  the  "  Teiresias  "  volume  came  out  with 
a  prologue  addressed  to  "  Old  Fitz  "  and  written 
in  his  lifetime,  but  as  was  usual  kept  by  the  author 
for  a  long  time  before  publishing.  For  Fitz  died 
in  1883  and  a  postscript  is  added  to  the  prologue 
in  which  the  poet  says — 

Remembering  the  happy  hours 

Now  silent — and  so  many  dead, 
And  him  the  last. 

Of  this  visit  to  the  Lakes  James  Spedding  in  a  letter 
to  Donne  dated  "June  ist,  1835,  Mirehouse,"  says, 
E.  F.  G.  (Edward  FitzGerald)  was  here  for  about 
a  month.  He  is  a  prince  of  Quietists.  I  reckon 
myself  a  quiet  man,  but  that  is  nature,  in  him  it 
is  principle.  Half  the  self-sacrifice,  the  self-denial, 
the  moral  resolution  which  he  exercises  to  keep 
himself  easy  would  amply  furnish  forth  a  martyr 
or  a  missionary.  His  tranquillity  is  like  a  pirated 
copy  of  the  Peace  of  God.  Truly  he  is  a  most 
comfortable  companion.  He  would  have  every- 
body about  him  as  comfortable  as  himself.  .  .  . 
There  tarried  with  us  at  the  same  time  a  man  who 
is  in  many  points  his  opposite.  ...  To  wit  Alfred 
Tennyson  ...  for  he  is  a  man  always  discon- 
tented with  the  Present  until  it  has  become  the 


260  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Past,  and  then  he  yearns  towards  it  and  worships 
it,  but  is  discontented  because  it  is  past.  But 
though  this  habit  makes  him  gruff  and  dyspeptic 
at  times,  you  must  understand  that  he  is  a  man  of 
a  noble  spirit  and  a  tender  heart,  his  frailty  is 
that  he  has  not  faith  enough  in  his  own  powers/' 
The  letter  goes  on  to  speak  of  Wordsworth. 

"  I  saw  Wordsworth  for  a  few  hours  not  long 
ago/'  (That  was  not  an  age  for  snapshot  visits.) 
"  He  is  very  well  himself  but  troubled  with  domes- 
tic sorrows  and  anxieties.  His  sister  still  lingers 
on,  and  his  daughter  has  been  ill  for  a  good  while, 
and  gets  no  better/7  She  did  recover,  and  in  1841 
married  Edward  Quillinan,  and  died  in  1847. 

In  another  letter  to  Donne,  he  says  of  Southey, 
then  Poet  Laureate,  who  was  receiving  £1,000  for 
editing  Cowper's  Life,  "  He  thinks  Cowper's 
letters  the  most  beautiful  that  ever  were  written." 
Spedding  had  a  magnificent  forehead  which  was 
exaggerated  by  his  premature  baldness  when  an 
undergraduate,  hence  FitzGerald  writes,  "  Of 
course  you  have  read  the  account  of  Spedding' s 
forehead  landing  in  America ;  English  sailors 
hailed  it  in  the  Channel,  mistaking  it  for  Beachy 
Head/' 

At  this  time  he  was  reading  a  great  deal  of 
Wordsworth,  and  busy  with  his  own  poems  too  ; 
but  the  only  thing  published  in  this  decade  between 
1832  and  1842  was  a  poem  he  wrote  for  The 
Tribute,  a  volume  of  verse  by  various  hands  which 
Lord  Northampton  got  together  to  be  sold  for 
a  charitable  purpose.  The  poem  was  "  Oh,  that 
'twere  possible,"  etc.,  which  is  the  nucleus  round 
which  Maud  was  formed  eighteen  years  later. 


Tennyson  Centenary  261 

In  my  brother's  book  are  three  little  birthday 
poems  and  two  others  written  at  this  time  to  my 
Aunt  Sophy  Rawnsley,  the  "  Airy  fairy  Lilian  " 
of  his  early  poem,  and  Rosa  Baring,  both  of  whom 
lived  near  Somersby. 

We  seem  to  catch  an  echo  of  these  two  names  in 
Maud — 

Queen  Rose  of  the  rosebud  garden  of  girls, 
Queen  Lily  and  Rose  in  one. 

I  saw  Mrs.  Buncombe  Shafto  when  she  was 
eighty-four,  and  she  gave  me  a  vivid  account  of 
those  early  days  when  she  and  my  aunt  (after- 
wards Mrs.  Edward  Elmhirst)  were  girls.  She  said  : 
"  You  know  we  used  to  spoil  him,  for  we  sat  at  his 
feet  and  worshipped  him  ;  and  he  read  to  us,  and 
how  well  he  read  !  And  when  he  wrote  us  those 
little  poems  we  were  more  than  proud.  Ah, 
those  days  at  Somersby  and  Harrington  and 
Halton,  how  delightful  they  were/' 

At  length,  in  1842,  the  poems  came  out  in  two 
volumes.  The  first  volume  embraced  the  poems 
published  in  1830  and  poems  published  in  1832 
with  many  alterations  and  several  omissions  and 
a  few  additions,  e.g.,  Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere, 
The  Blackbird,  and  the  exquisite  little  poems  on 
Freedom.  Volume  II.  was  entirely  new,  and 
contained  the  Morte  d' Arthur,  subsequently  em- 
bedded in  the  last  of  the  Idylls.  It  has  the  famous 
lines — 

The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfils  Himself  in  many  ways, 

and  the  beautiful  lines  on  Prayer,  ending  with 


262  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

For  so  the  whole  round  earth  is  every  way 
Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God. 

Then  there  was  besides  the  Morte  dy Arthur,  The 
Gardener's  Daughter,  Ulysses,  and  Locksley  Hall, 
than  which  four  pieces  he  never  wrote  anything 
better  ;  also  The  Two  Voices,  The  Talking  Oak,  The 
Lord  of  Burleigh,  The  Poet's  Song  and  Break,  Break, 
Break,  which  was  saved  from  destruction  by  my 
uncle,  who,  when  the  Poet  was  burning  a  lot  of 
papers,  seized  it,  saying :  "  You  must  not  burn 
that ;  it  is  one  of  the  best  things  you  have  written. " 

"  Oh,  is  it !  "  he  said,  and  put  it  aside. 

In  1842  he  put  his  money  into  a  scheme  which 
failed,  the  details  of  which  he  writes  to  my  grand- 
father, and  in  1845  Peel  gave  him  a  Civil  List 
Pension  of  £200. 

In  the  year  1844  Cecilia  Tennyson  was  married 
to  Edmund  Lushington,  Professor  of  Greek  at  the 
University  of  Glasgow.  In  1847  The  Princess 
came  out ;  but  its  lovely  songs  were  only  added  to 
the  third  edition  in  1850. 

These  beautiful  songs  mark  the  happy  year  of 
the  Poet's  marriage  and  the  completion  of  In 
Memoriam,  and  his  obtaining  the  laureateship,  a 
veritable  Annus  Mirabilis. 

It  was  in  the  year  after  Arthur  Hallam's  intro- 
duction to  Emily  Tennyson  that  Alfred  met  his 
future  wife  in  Emily  Sellwood.  She  was  a  first 
cousin  of  my  mother's,  both  being  nieces  of  Sir 
John  Franklin,  whose  home  was  at  Spilsby,  and 
they  had  been  brought  up  very  much  together,  so 
much  so  that  Emily  signed  her  letters  to  my 
mother  "  Thy  loving  sister,  Emily."  In  1830  Emily 
Sellwood,  having  driven  over  with  her  parents 


Tennyson  Centenary  263 

from  Horncastle,  was  walking  with  Arthur  Hallam 
in  the  "  Fairy  Wood  "  when  they  came  on  Alfred. 
He  was  immensely  struck  with  her,  and  when  he 
had  to  take  her  into  church  at  his  brother  Charles' 
wedding — for  Charles  married  her  sister  Louisa 
in  1836 — he  was  even  more  taken  by  her  grace 
and  beauty,  and  her  fine  intellectual  qualities; 
and  when,  in  1837,  the  family  left  Somersby,  the 
Poet  and  his  future  bride  were  so  far  engaged 
that  they  corresponded  for  the  next  three  years. 
In  1840  this  correspondence  was  forbidden,  as  no 
prospects  seemed  to  be  opening  or  likely  to  open ; 
indeed  Emily,  in  a  letter  to  my  mother,  says  that 
she  had  definitely  refused  him  two  years  back ; 
but  she  always  thought  of  him,  and  they  each  kept 
the  sacred  fire  alight  in  their  hearts,  and  when,  in 
1850,  my  mother  brought  them  again  together  at 
our  home  at  Shiplake  on  the  Thames,  there  was 
nothing  to  bar  the  way.  They  were  married  there 
by  my  father  on  June  13, 1850,  in  Shiplake  Church, 
by  special  licence.  I  have  the  licence,  in  which 
he  is  described  as  Alfred  Tennyson  of  Lincoln  Inn 
Fields,  and  she  as  Emily  Sarah  Sellwood  of  East 
Bourne,  in  the  County  of  Sussex.  Really  they 
were  both  Lincolnshire  people,  and  my  father  and 
mother  were  old  friends  from  the  same  county  and 
neighbourhood.  My  father  was  assisted  by  his 
curate,  Greville  Phillimore,  and  hardly  any  one 
was  present  at  the  wedding  but  a  few  relatives,  viz. 
the  bride's  father,  her  brother-in-law,  Mr.  C.  Weld 
(the  husband  of  her  sister  Anne),  and  Edmund 
and  Cecilia  Lushington,  and  my  mother,  also  my 
elder  sister  and  my  cousin,  Jenny  Elmhirst,  who 
acted  as  bridesmaids,  my  younger  sister  in  her 


264  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

nurse's  arms,  and  myself.  I  remember  little 
of  it,  except  that  I  walked  behind  my  sister  with  a 
bit  of  syringa  or  mock-orange  in  my  buttonhole. 
We  all  walked  to  the  church,  for  Shiplake  Church 
and  Vicarage  are  only  separated  by  a  lane  ;  and 
of  all  that  wedding  party  my  cousin  and  I  are 
now  the  sole  survivors.  On  the  very  next  day,  my 
mother  received  a  little  note  from  both  bride  and 
bridegroom.  It  ran  thus — 

"  June  14,  1850. 
"  MY  DEAREST  KATIE, — 

I  know  you  will  rejoice  to  hear  I  am  as  happy  and 
comfortable  as  even  you  could  wish  me.  I  must 
write  again  to  tell  you  where  to  direct  to  us, 
probably  somewhere  near  Weston-super-Mare,  if 
not  there.  I  owe  you  a  great  deal.  Please  tell 
my  Daddy  all  except  the  In  Memoriam.  I  am 
going  directly.  My  best  love  and  all  thanks  for 
kindnesses  innumerable. 

"  Thy  very  affectionate  sister, 

"  EMILY." 
"  MY  DEAR  KATE, — 

"  You  managed  it  all  very  well  yesterday.  Many 
Thanks. 

"  Ever  yours, 
"A.  T. 

"  Dubbie's l  fees  must  be  come  at  as  he  can  best 
manage.  The  clerk  and  the  shirts  are  owing." 

On  looking  at  the  marriage  licence  you  would 
see  that  it  is  dated  May  fifteenth,  though  the  wed- 

1  An  affectionate  abbreviation  of  my  father's  name, 
Drummond. 


Tennyson  Centenary  265 

ding  day  was  June  13.  The  reason  of  this  is,  that 
my  mother,  who  had  undertaken  to  have  the  wed- 
ding from  our  house  at  Shiplake,  and  to  see  that 
Alfred  had  what  was  needed  for  the  occasion,  in- 
cluding a  proper  outfit  and  the  wedding  cake, 
found  it  impossible  to  get  him  to  fix  a  date  and 
stick  to  it.  He  was  just  then  suffering  from  one 
of  his  fits  of  depression,  which  he  once  told  me 
would  come  over  him  suddenly  sometimes  in  a 
ball-room  and  which  he  only  quite  late  in  life  dis- 
covered to  be  due  to  gout.  The  consequence  was 
that  he  could  not  make  up  his  mind,  and  he  wrote 
to  his  mother  only  just  before  the  wedding  that  he 
"  should  have  written  to  let  her  know  earlier,  but 
that  he  did  not  know  himself  till  just  at  last,  as  he 
could  not  make  up  his  mind/'  His  sister  Mary 
also  wrote  in  June,  "  Alfred  maintains  a  cruel 
silence  about  his  engagement,  which  I  think 
is  not  fair  towards  his  family,  especially  as  the 
Rawnsleys  know  it." 

And  again,  "  Of  Alfred  as  yet  we  have  heard 
nothing.  I  suppose  in  the  due  course  of  time  he  will 
make  known  to  his  family  what  he  has  done  or 
intends  doing/' 

The  result  of  this  depression  was  that  the  date  of 
the  wedding  hung  uncertain  for  some  weeks,  until 
owing,  says  his  sister  Mary,  to  the  persuasion  of 
Edmund  and  Cecilia  Liishington,  but  really  still 
more  to  my  mother's  insistence,  he  brought  him- 
self to  name  the  day,  and  in  the  beginning  of  the 
month  wrote  to  my  mother— 

"  DEAR  KATE,— 

"  It  is  settled  for  the  13 th,  so  the  shirts  may  be 
gone  on  with/' 


266  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

His  sister  Mary,  who  had  written  in  commisera- 
tion, "  poor  thing,  I  dare  say  he  is  miserable 
enough  at  times,  thinking  of  what  he  is  about  to 
do,"  wrote  afterwards  of  the  wedding  just  as  if  it 
had  been  a  funeral,  beginning  her  letter  :  "  Well, 
all  is  over.  Alfred  was  married  to  Emily  Sellwood 
last  Friday.  .  .  .  Friday,  and  raining,  about  which 
I  feel  very  superstitious.  .  .  .  Emily  looked  bright, 
they  say.  They  were  married  at  the  Drummond 
Rawnsleys  and  the  Lushingtons  were  there.  .  .  . 
We  received  this  morning  a  beautiful  piece  of 
bridecake.  I  hope  they  will  be  happy,  but  I  feel 
very  doubtful  about  it." 

In  a  subsequent  letter  she  says,  "  They  were  not 
married  on  a  Friday,  as  we  supposed,  but  on  the 
Wednesday  before,  the  I3th.  We  have  heard  from 
Emily  since.  .  .  .  She  wrote  begging  Mamma's 
blessing."  In  her  next  letter  she  writes,  "  Alfred, 
I  suppose,  will  be  here  soon  for  there  is  a  letter 
come  for  Emily  here.  How  sad  it  seems  to  me  all 
this.  However,  I  have  no  doubt  of  her  making 
him  a  good  wife  as  she  is  so  very  fond  of  him."  And 
when  she  had  seen  the  bride  and  bridegroom  she 
writes  to  the  same  friend,  "  Alfred  makes  an  excel- 
lent husband."  Writing  again  from  Cheltenham, 
in  July,  she  says  :  "  Alfred  and  Emily  are  going  to 
leave  us  to-morrow  ;  they  think  of  going  to  a  house 
that  has  been  offered  them  by  Mrs.  Marshall.  She 
was  formerly  a  Miss  Springrice,  the  Queen's  maid- 
of-honour.  It  is  situated  near  the  Lakes  ;  they 
are  offered  it  for  as  long  a  time  as  they  like,  and 
they  very  likely  will  stay  there  until  they  have  got 
a  house  to  live  in  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London. 
Alfred  has  not  yet  quite  got  rid  of  the  hay  fever, 


Tennyson  Centenary  267 

but  looks  better  than  he  did  when  he  came  to  us." 
And  she  begins  a  later  letter,  on  August  5,  1850, 
with  :  "  I  write  these  few  lines,  dearest,  to  tell  you 
Alfred's  address,  which  I  had  forgotten  to  give  you 
in  niy  last,  it  is  Tent  Lodge,  Conigston  Water, 
Ambleside,  Lancashire." 

When  once  the  plunge  was  taken  all  doubts, 
whether  his  own  or  his  sister's,  quickly  vanished  ; 
and  six  months  later  he  more  was  than  happy,  and 
wrote  two  charming  stanzas  in  praise  of  his  bride 
which  I  have  in  his  own  handwriting.  For  Tenny- 
son made  a  little  poem  as  they  drove  off  to  the  train 
on  the  wedding  day,  and  when  he  visited  us  some 
six  months  or  so  later  he  wrote  it  out  with  two 
additional  stanzas  in  eulogy  of  his  bride  and  sent  it 
to  my  father.  I  have  the  original  MS.,  and  it  runs 
thus — 

"  DEAR  DRUMMOND, — 

"  I  send  you  my  poem,  made  for  the  most  part  in 
your  own  carriage,  between  Shiplake  and  Reading. 
Keep  it  to  yourself,  as  I  should  have  kept  it  to 
myself  if  Kate  had  not  asked  for  it,  i.e.,  keep  it  till 
I  give  you  leave  to  make  it  public. 

"  Ever  yours, 

"A.  TENNYSON. J) 

Vicar  of  this  pleasant  spot 

Where  it  was  my  chance  to  marry, 

Happy,  happy  be  your  lot 

In  the  Vicarage  by  the  quarry  ! 

You  were  he  that  knit  the  knot. 

Sweetly,  smoothly  flow  your  life  ! 
Never  parish  feud  perplex  you, 
Tithe  unpaid  or  party  strife, 
All  tilings  please  you,  nothing  vex  you  ! 
You  have  given  me  such  a  wife. 


268  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Have  I  found  in  one  so  near 
Aught  but  sweetness  aye  prevailing  ? 
Or  through  more  than  half  a  year 
Half  the  fraction  of  a  failing  ? 
Therefore,  bless  you,  Drummond  dear. 

Good  she  is  and  pure  and  just. 
Being  conquered  by  her  sweetness, 
I  shall  come  through  her,  I  trust, 
Into  fuller-orbed  completeness, 
Though  but  made  of  erring  dust. 

You  meanwhile  shall,  day  by  day, 
Watch  your  standard  roses  blowing, 
And  your  three  young  things  at  play, 
And  your  triple  terrace  growing 
Green  to  greener  every  day. 

Smoothly  flow  your  life  with  Kate's, 
Glancing  off  from  all  things  evil, 
Smooth  as  Thames  below  your  gates, 
Thames  along  the  silent  level, 
Streaming  through  his  osiered  aits. 

The  "  three  young  things  at  play  "  were  my  two 
dear  sisters  and  myself,  and  my  mother  told  us 
that  as  she  drove  with  the  Poet  to  Reading  station 
that  December  morning  she  saw  he  was  busy  com- 
posing, and  when  he  had  finished  writing  she  said  : 
"  Now  I  know  what  you  have  been  doing,  you  must 
give  me  a  copy  of  it."  He  said  he  would  "  send 
it  to  Dubbie,"  which  he  did. 

Emily  Tennyson  was  indeed  all  that  the  Poet 
says  of  her  in  the  stanzas  quoted  above.  How 
she  struck  people  who  had  the  luck  to  know  her 
may  appear  from  the  following  letter  from  Ed- 
ward Lear,  author  of  the  Nonsense  Book  and 
artist,  whose  works  adorn  the  houses  at  Farring- 
ford  and  Aldworth,  and  were  greatly  prized  by  the 
Poet. 

Letters  of  Edward  Lear,  page  138. 

"  My  visit  at  Farringford  was  very  delightful  in 


Tennyson  Centenary  269 

many  ways.  I  should  think,  computing  moder- 
ately, that  fifteen  angels,  several  hundreds  of  ordin- 
ary women,  many  philosophers,  a  heap  of  truly  wise 
and  kind  mothers,  three  or  four  minor  prophets, 
and  a  lot  of  doctors  and  school-mistresses,  might 
all  be  boiled  down,  and  yet  their  combined  essence 
fall  short  of  what  Emily  Tennyson  really  is." 

Written  June  12,  1859. 

The  MS.  of  In  Memoriam  had  been  written  out 
more  than  once  and  we  used  to  hear  cantos  read 
aloud  at  Shiplake,  where  at  least  one,  "  Sweet 
Hesper-Phosphor  "  (No.  CXXL),  was  composed. 
Finally  my  mother  had  obtained  leave  to  send 
it  to  Emily  Sellwood,  who  wrote  an  excellent  letter 
of  heartfelt  praise  of  "  The  Elegies,"  as  they  were 
then  called,  for  the  Poet  had  at  one  time  thought  of 
calling  it  "  Fragments  of  an  Elegy !  "  Fancy 
that !  But  she  was  almost  afraid  to  send  it.  So 
she  wrote  to  my  mother  on  April  i  :  "  My  dearest 
Katie.  .  .  .  Do  you  really  think  that  I  should 
write  a  line  with  the  Elegies,  that  is,  in  a  separate 
note  to  say  I  have  returned  them  ?  I  am  almost 
afraid,  but  since  you  say  I  am  to  do  so,  I  will,  only 
I  cannot  say  what  I  feel."  For  the  rest  of  letter 
see  Memories  of  the  Tennysons,  page  123.  It  is  this 
letter  of  hers  that  she  refers  to  when  she  says  : 
"  Tell  my  Daddy  all  except  the  In  Memoriam." 

Mary  Tennyson  writes  to  a  friend  in  Somersby 
in  April  1850.  "  Do  you  know  whether  Alfred's 
book  is  out  yet  ?  I  am  so  anxious  to  have  it  that 
I  think  I  shall  write  to  Moxon  to  send  me  one  when 
ready.  Don't  you  long  to  see  it  ?  How  beautiful 
those  poems  are  !  " 

In  Memoriam  was  published  in  the  wedding 


270  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

month  of  June  1850,  and  in  the  Epilogue  the  Poet 
describes  the  wedding  of  his  youngest  sister,  Cecilia, 
with  Edmund  Lushington,  of  Park  House,  Maid- 
stone,  and  Professor  of  Greek  in  the  University 
of  Glasgow.  The  wedding  took  place  at  Boxley, 
near  Maidstone,  on  October  10,  1842,  as  Tenny- 
son and  his  mother  and  sisters  had  been  living  in 
1841  and  1842  at  Boxley  Hall,  and  Park  House 
was  in  that  parish,  and  it  was  at  Park  House  that 
Cecilia  died,  only  the  other  day  (in  March  1909), 
aged  92. 

Lushington  first  saw  these  stanzas  on  his  own 
marriage  three  years  after  the  wedding,  when 
Tennyson  said  :  "  I  have  brought  in  your  marriage 
at  the  end  of  In  Memoriam"  and  showed  him 
the  stanzas. 

In  November  of  the  same  year  Tennyson  was 
appointed  Poet  Laureate  in  succession  to  Words- 
worth. In  a  letter  to  my  grandfather,  written  in 
November  1850,  he  says — 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  congratulations  touching 
the  Laureateship.  I  was  advised  by  my  friends 
not  to  decline  it,  and  I  was  even  told  that,  being  al- 
ready in  receipt  of  a  pension,  I  could  not  gracefully 
refuse  it ;  but  I  wish  more  and  more  that  some  one 
else  had  it.  I  have  no  passion  for  courts,  but  a 
great  love  of  privacy,  nor  do  I  count  having  the 
office  as  any  particular  feather  in  my  cap  ;  it  is,  I 
believe,  scarcely  £100  a  year,  and  my  friend,  R.  M. 
Milnes,  tells  me  that  the  price  of  the  patent  and 
court  dress  will  swallow  up  all  the  first  year's  in- 
come." 

The  Court  dress  did  not  cost  him  much,  as  he 
went  in  the  dress  which  had  served  for  Words- 


Tennyson  Centenary  271 

worth,  who  in  turn  had  obtained  it  from  the  old 
poet  Rogers.  I  have  seen  it,  as  it  is  still  in  the 
Wordsworth  family,  and  I  have  often  wondered 
how  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson  managed  to  get 
into  it,  for  Rogers  was  a  very  little  man,  and  they 
were  both  big.  Tennyson  managed  better  than 
Wordsworth,  for  Mary,  writing  in  March  1851, 
says,  "  Alfred  is  in  Twickenham  ;  he  has  been  to 
Court  and  the  Queen  smiled  sweetly  on  him  "  ;  but 
about  Wordsworth  a  story  is  told  how  the  Queen 
at  a  drawing-room  one  day  asked,  "  Who  was  that 
dear  old  man  who  was  praying  so  long  ?  "  "  That, 
Madam,  was  Mr.  Wordsworth,  the  Poet  Laureate/' 
The  fact  was  that  kneeling  he  found  Rogers' 
smalls  so  tight  that  he  either  could  not  get  up  or 
feared  to  try.  Apropos  of  Rogers,  in  a  long  letter 
to  my  grandfather,  in  1845,  written  on  four  sheets 
torn  from  a  ledger  or  notebook,  Tennyson,  after 
speaking  of  the  pension  which  Peel  had  given  him, 
sends  Rogers'  autograph  to  my  aunt,  and  says  :  "  I 
wrote  to  Rogers,  thanking  him  for  his  kindness.  I 
thought  he  must  have  been  mentioning  me  to  Peel ; 
he  wrote  me  back  a  very  pretty  answer,  which  I  send 
Sophy  for  an  autograph  of  the  old  Eard.  Would 
any  one  think  that  pretty  little  hand  was  written 
by  a  man  somewhere  between  eighty  and  ninety  ? 
Now,  Sophy,  if,  as  a  matron,  you  do  not  care  for 
autographs,  or  intend  to  lose  it,  or  to  give  it  away, 
why  let  me  have  it  back  again,  for  I  have  some  value 
for  it,  particularly  as  the  old  man  and  I  fell  out 
one  wet  day  in  Pall  Mall  about  half  a  year  ago, 
when  I  said  something  that  offended  him,  and  his 
face  flushed  and  he  plucked  his  arm  out  of  mine 
and  told  me  I  was  affecting  the  smart."  But  you 


272  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

can  see  this  in  Lord  Tennyson's  memoir  of  his 
father,  which  contains  the  greater  part  of  this  long 
and  interesting  letter. 

The  couple  lived  at  Twickenham,  after  a  short 
sojourn  at  the  English  Lakes  ;  in  1851  they  were 
a  good  deal  in  Italy,  where  the  first  child  was  born, 
but  never  lived,  and  in  1852  back  at  Twickenham, 
where  Hallam,  the  present  Lord  Tennyson,  was 
born,  and  in  1853  (November  25)  they  removed  to 
Farringford,  which  was  to  be  their  home  for  forty 
years.  Their  second  son  was  born  in  1854,  and 
in  1854  came  out  in  a  newspaper  The  Charge  of  the 
Light  Brigade.  I  once  asked  the  Poet  whether  he 
had  taken  the  metre  of  this  poem  from  Drayton's 
poem  of  Agincourt,  and  he  said,  "  no,"  but  that 
in  The  Times'  account  of  the  Balaclava  Charge 
there  was  the  expression  "  Some  one  had  blun- 
dered," and  it  got  into  his  head,  and  he  kept  saying 
it  over  and  over  till  it  shaped  itself  into  the  burden 
of  the  poem,  and  so  the  line  comes  twice  over  in 
the  first  imprint  of  it.  I  have  it,  just  as  it  was  cut 
out  of  the  Examiner  newspaper,  in  which  it  ap- 
peared, and  sent  by  the  Poet  to  my  grandfather. 
It  is  not  much  altered,  but  even  in  this  newspaper 
cutting  four  lines  are  inked  out  and  eight  others 
written  in  at  the  side  in  his  wife's  handwriting,  only 
six  of  which  are  in  the  poem  as  it  is  now  printed. 
In  Stanza  2,  the  lines : 

For  up  came  an  order  which 
Some  one  had  blundered 

are  now  left  out,  and  the  next  two  lines  : 

"  Forward  the  Light  Brigade  ! 
Take  the  guns  !  "  Nolan  said, 


Tennyson  Centenary  273 

are  changed  to  : 

"  Forward  the  Light  Brigade  ! 
Charge  for  the  guns  !  "  he  said. 

Considering  the  expression  which  was  the  origin 
of  the  poem  it  is  somewhat  curious  that  in  the 
version  published  with  Maud  in  1855  these  two 
lines  and  the  next  six 

Forward  the  Light  Brigade  ! 
Was  there  a  man  dismay'd  ? 
Not  tho'  the  soldier  knew 
Some  one  had  blundered  ; 

are  left  out :  and  the  words  some  one  had  blundered 
are  not  in  the  poem  at  all.  Nolan  was  the  first 
man  to  fall ;  he  was  the  Galloper  who  brought 
the  blundered  order,  and  his  peremptory  manner 
had  very  much  nettled  Lord  Cardigan  and  precipi- 
tated this  wild  charge. 

The  omitted  lines  are  now  restored  and  un- 
doubtedly the  change  is  for  the  better,  as  indeed  it 
is  in  all  his  alterations.  To  take  an  instance. 
In  the  1832  volume  the  poem  of  (Enone  opens  thus : 

There  is  a  dale  in  Ida  lovelier 

Than  any  in  old  Ionia,  beautiful 

With  emerald  slopes  of  sunny  sward,  that  lean 

Above  the  loud  glenriver,  which  hath  worn 

A  path  though  steepdown  granite  walls  below 

Mantled  with  flowering  tendriltwine.     In  front 

The  cedarshadowy  valleys  open  wide. 

You  will  notice  four  composite  words  in  the  last 
four  lines,  all  without  hyphens.  In  1842  we  have 
in  place  of  these  lines  : 

There  lies  a  vale  in  Ida,  lovelier 
Than  all  the  valleys  of  Ionian  hills. 
The  swimming  vapour  slopes  athwart  the  glen, 
Puts  forth  an  arm,  and  creeps  from  pine  to  pine, 

T 


274  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

And  loiters,  slowly  drawn.     On  either  hand 
The  lawns  and  meadow-ledges  midway  down 
Hang  rich  in  flowers,  and  far  below  them  roars 
The  long  brook  falling  thro'  the  clov'n  ravine 
In  cataract  after  cataract  to  the  sea. 

An  immense  improvement !  The  picture  of  the 
mist  in  the  pines  is  added,  and  the  composite 
nouns  have  all  disappeared,  a  new  one — meadow- 
ledges — being  used  with  a  hyphen. 

Again,  compare  the  first  edition  of  the  The  Prin- 
cess— 1847 — with  the  third  edition,  to  which  the 
songs  were  added  in  1850  ;  you  will  find  it  was  con- 
siderably recast  in  that  third  edition,  and  very 
much  to  its  advantage,  and  in  1882,  writing  to  a 
Mr.  Dawson,  who  had  brought  out  a  Study  of 
Lord  Tennyson's  Poem,  The  Princess,  in  Canada, 
the  Poet  tells  him  that  the  songs  were  not  an 
afterthought.  He  had  deliberated  about  putting 
songs  in  before  the  first  edition  came  out.  He 
adds  :  "  You  would  be  still  more  certain  that  the 
child  was  the  true  heroine  of  the  piece  if,  instead 
of  the  first  song  as  it  now  stands,  '  As  thro'  the 
land  at  eve  we  went,'  I  had  printed  the  first  song 
which  I  wrote '  The  losing  of  the  child.'  "  x 

Charles  Kingsley  understood  this  when  he  wrote 
his  review  of  the  third  edition  in  Fraser's  Magazine. 
He  says : 

"  At  the  end  of  the  first  canto,  fresh  from  the 
description  of  the  female  college,  with  its  pro- 
fessoresses,  and  hostleresses,  and  other  Utopian 
monsters  "  [you  must  bear  in  mind  that  this  was 
written  nearly  sixty  years  ago]  "  we  turn  the  page, 
and 

1  This  is  printed  in  the  ''Life  "  by  his  son. 


Tennyson  Centenary  275 

As  through  the  land  at  eve  we  went 
*  *  *  * 

O  there  above  the  little  grave 
We  kissed  again  with  tears. 

Between  the  next  two  cantos  intervenes  the  well 
known  cradle-song, 

Sweet  and  low,  sweet  and  low, 
Wind  of  the  western  sea, 

perhaps  the  best  of  all ;  and  at  the  next  interval  is 
the  equally  well  known  bugle-song,  '  The  splendour 
falls  on  castle  walls/  the  idea  of  which  is  that  of 
twin  labour  and  twin  fame  in  a  pair  of  lovers.  In 
the  next,  '  Thy  voice  is  heard  thro'  rolling  drums/ 
the  memory  of  wife  and  child  inspirits  the  soldier 
on  the  field,  and  in  the  next,  '  Home  they  brought 
her  warrior  dead/  the  sight  of  the  fallen  hero's 
child  opens  the  sluices  of  the  widow's  tears  ;  and 
in  the  last,  '  Ask  me  no  more/  the  Poet  has  suc- 
ceeded in  the  new  edition  in  superadding  a  new 
form  of  emotion  to  a  canto  in  which  he  seemed  to 
have  exhausted  every  source  of  pathos  which  his 
subject  allowed/' 

I  have  a  letter  from  Sir  G.  (then  Mr.)  Grove, 
who  was  editor  of  Macmillan's  Magazine,  and  of  the 
Dictionary  of  Music,  in  which,  after  speaking  of  an 
article  my  father  was  contributing  to  his  magazine, 
he  says : 

"...  Thanks  for  the  anecdote  about  'The 
splendour  falls/  He  has  several  times  told  me 
that  he  meant  to  put  some  other  word  in  place  of 
one  of  the  two  '  wilds.' x  The  last  of  those  songs, 

1  And  the  wild  cataract  leaps  in  glory.  Set  the  wild 
echoes  flying. 


276  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

'  Ask  me  no  more/  is  the  finest  of  all  to  my  mind. 
It  contains  a  whole  three-act  drama.  I  wrote  a 
commentary  on  that  once,  but  can't  find  it.  But 
one  of  the  most  interesting  things  I  know  is  to 
compare  the  two  versions  of  the  '  Rolling  drums  ' 
and  the  sketch,  '  Home  they  brought  him  slain 
with  spears  '  (  a  regular  sketch  in  every  sense  of  the 
word)  with  the  finished  picture  in  The  Princess, 
'  Home  they  brought  her  warrior  dead/  I  don't 
want  to  do  a  mere  annotated  In  Memoriam, 
but  to  show  all  the  innumerable  points  of  connexion 
and  contrast  and  repetition,  and  all  the  thousand 
subtle  things  that  not  one  in  a  million  knows  about ; 
e.g.,  how  wonderfully  instructive  are  the  two  addi- 
tions, '  O  Sorrow  '  and  '  Dark  Warder/  But  I 
must  stop. 

11  Yours  very  truly, 

G.  GROVE/' 

To  the  lovely  little  cradle-song,  "  Sweet  and  low/' 
Tennyson  wrote  an  alternative  version,  very  pretty, 
but  his  wife  thought  the  "  Sweet  and  low  "  version 
would  go  better  to  music.  I  have  got  the  alterna- 
tive version  in  the  Poet's  own  handwriting.  The 
first  verse  runs  thus  : 

Bright  is  the  moon  on  the  deep, 
Bright  are  the  cliffs  in  her  beam, 

Sleep,  my  little  one,  sleep. 
Look,  he  smiles  and  opens  his  hands, 
He  sees  his  father  in  distant  lands, 
And  kisses  him  there  in  a  dream. 

Sleep — sleep. 

Father  is  over  the  deep, 
Father  will  come  to  thee  soon, 
Sleep,  my  pretty  one,  sleep. 


Tennyson  Centenary  277 

Father  will  come  to  his  babe  in  the  nest, 
Silver  sails  all  out  of  the  west, 
Under  the  silver  moon. 
Sleep — sleep. 

The  idea  of  the  baby  stretching  out  his  hands 
to  his  father  is  found  in  Catullus,  but  his  doing  it 
in  a  dream  is  Tennyson's. 

But  there  is  yet  a  third  and  earlier  version 
preserved  by  my  uncle  at  Raithby  along  with 
autograph  copies  of  "Break,  Break"  and  "The 
Eagle."  The  Lincolnshire  expression  "  claps  the 
gate"  and  the  use  of  the  word  "wold"  seem 
to  point  to  its  being  a  Lincolnshire  poem,  possibly 
therefore  written  at  Somersby,  which  they  had  left 
thirteen  years  before  the  songs  in  The  Princess 
were  published,  and  note  that  the  word  "  blossom" 
for  the  babe  comes  twice  over  in  The  Princess,  in 
Lady  Psyche's  lament  for  the  loss  of  her  little  one. 

"Ah  me,  my  babe,  my  blossom,  ah,  my  child," 

Who  claps  the  gate 

So  late,  so  late  ? 
Who  claps  the  gate  on  the  lonely  wold  ? 

O  were  it  he 

Come  back  from  sea  ! 
Sleep,  my  blossom,  the  night  is  cold. 

Sleep,  dearest  dear, 

The  moon  is  clear 
To  light  him  back  to  my  babe  and  me  ; 

And  he'll  come  soon 

All  under  the  moon, 
A  thousand  miles  on  the  silver  sea. 

There  are  other  songs  also  in  The  Princess''  Tears, 
idle  Tears,"  and  "  0  Swallow,"  and  the  small, 
sweet  idyll,  "  Come  down,  O  Maid."  This  and  the 


278  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

pastoral  pictures  in  The  Gardener's  Daughter 
are  two  idylls  of  unsurpassable  beauty,  and  contain 
the  best  lines,  in  the  Poet's  own  judgment,  that  he 
ever  wrote. 

The  steer  forgot  to  graze, 

And,  where  the  hedgerow  cuts  the  pathway,  stood 
Leaning  his  horns  into  the  neighbour  field, 
And  lowing  to  his  fellows.     From  the  woods 
Came  voices  of  the  well-contented  doves. 
The  lark  could  scarce  get  out  his  notes  for  joy, 
But  shook  his  song  together  as  he  neared 
His  happy  home,  the  ground.     To  left  and  right 
The  cuckoo  told  his  name  to  all  the  hills  ; 
The  mellow  ouzel  fluted  in  the  elm  ; 
The  redcap  whistled,  and  the  nightingale 
Sang  loud,  as  tho'  he  were  the  bird  of  day. 

That  is  from  The  Gardener's  Daughter,  and  now 
for  The  Princess : 

Deep  in  the  night  I  woke,  she  near  me  held 
A  volume  of  the  Poets  of  her  land  : 
Then  to  herself,  all  in  low  tones  she  read. 

*  *  *  * 

Come  down,  O  maid,  from  yonder  mountain  height ; 

What  pleasure  lives  in  height  (the  shepherd  sang) 

In  height  and  cold  the  splendour  of  the  hills  ? 

But  cease  to  move  so  near  the  Heavens  and  cease 

To  glide  a  sunbeam  by  the  blasted  pine, 

To  sit  a  star  upon  the  sparkling  spire  ; 

And  come,  for  Love  is  of  the  Valley,  come, 

For  Love  is  of  the  Valley,  come  thou  down 

And  find  him  ;  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Let  the  torrent  dance  thee  down 

To  find  him  in  the  Valley ;  let  the  wild 

Leanheaded  Eagles  yelp  alone,  and  leave 

The  monstrous  ledges  there  to  slope,  and  spill 

Their  thousand  wreaths  of  dangling  watersmoke, 

That  like  a  broken  purpose  waste  in  air  : 

So  waste  not  thou  ;  but  come ;  for  all  the  vales 

Await  thee ;  azure  pillars  of  the  hearth 

Arise  to  thee ;  the  children  call,  and  I 

Thy  shepherd  pipe,  and  sweet  is  every  sound, 


Tennyson  Centenary  279 

Sweeter  thy  voice,  but  every  sound  is  sweet  : 
Myriads  of  rivulets  hurrying  through  the  lawn, 
The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms 
And  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees. 

"The  mellow  ouzel  fluted  in  the  elm/'  of  which 
the  poet  used  to  say  that  nine-tenths  of  the  men 
and  women  of  England  would  have  been  just  as 
pleased  with  "  The  merry  blackbird  sang  among  the 
trees,"  and  "The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial 
elms  and  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees  "  were, 
in  his  opinion,  among  the  best  lines  he  ever  wrote, 
but  this  was  before  he  had  written  those  fine  lines 
in  his  poem  to  Virgil  or  the  song  "  Far,  Far  Away/' 
He  was  fond  of  reading  his  own  verses  and  always 
chose  a  certain  few  for  reading  aloud,  among  them 
Guinevere,  Maud,  and  that  grand  poem  the  Ode  on 
the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  This  was  writ- 
ten for  the  Duke's  funeral  in  1852.  I  heard  him 
read  it  when  it  first  came  out  and,  young  as  I  was, 
it  made  a  great  impression  on  me  ;  the  lines  are 
very  fine,  and  as  he  rolled  them  out  they  were 
truly  magnificent.  It  contains,  too,  one  of  the 
best  instances  in  all  literature  of  the  solemnity 
given  by  repetition,  and  of  the  skilful  breaking 
up  of  the  lines  in  blank  verse  ;  I  mean  this  passage : 

Your  cannons  moulder  on  the  seaward  wall ; 
His  voice  is  silent  in  your  council  hall 
For  ever ;  and  whatever  tempests  lour 
For  ever  silent ;  even  though  they  broke 
In  thunder,  silent. 

Coventry  Patmore  having  heard  him  read  parts 
of  Maud  says,  "  His  reading  magnifies  the  merit 
of  everything,  it  is  so  grand." 
The  next  volume  that  he  produced  was  the  Maud 


280  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

volume  in  1855,  in  which  the  Ode  on  the  Death  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  The  Charge  of  the  Light 
Brigade,  and  The  Brook,  and  The  Daisy  appeared. 
The  Poet,  when  at  Shiplake,  was  casting  about 
for  a  subject,  and  my  mother  said  :  "  Why  not 
take  those  charming  lines  in  The  Tribute,  '  Oh 
that  'twere  possible/  and  make  more  of  them/' 
He  did  so,  and  he  wrote  a  good  deal  of  it  in  Sir 
John  Simeon's  garden  at  Swainston,  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight.  He  wrote  the  poem,  as  it  were,  back- 
wards. Starting  from  the  old  nucleus  and  writing 
something  to  precede  it,  and  then  something  more 
as  introduction  to  that.  He  was  never  tired  of 
telling  of  the  lady  whom  he  asked,  when  he  had 
read  that  lovely  canto,  "  Birds  in  the  High  Hall 
garden/'  "  Do  you  know  what  birds  those  are 
that  were  calling  '  Maud,  Maud,  Maud/  in  the  High 
Hall  garden  ?  "  and  who  answered,  "  Oh,  Mr. 
Tennyson,  was  it  the  nightingale  ?  "  Of  course 
it  was  the  rooks.  Here  I  may  as  well  say  that  the 
High  Hall  garden  was  not  the  garden  of  Harring- 
ton Hall,  near  Somersby,  any  more  than  the  old 
brick  house  with  its  parapet  at  Somersby  was  the 
Moated  Grange,  or  the  mill  in  The  Miller's 
Daughter  any  particular  local  mill,  or  The  Brook  the 
Somersby  Brook.  Though  "  Flow  down,  cold 
rivulet,"  does  describe  that,  and  there  are  frequent 
references  to  Somersby  in  In  Memoriam,  e.g.  in 
Cantos  X,  XXVIII,  C,  CI,  CII.  His  pictures  were 
usually  made  up  from  many  sources,  and  often  he 
would  put  into  a  line  or  two  of  verse  any  noticeable 
natural  phenomenon  for  future  use  in  quite  other 
surroundings. 
For  instance  the  lines — 


Tennyson  Centenary  281 

Then  as  a  stream  that  spouting  from  a  cliff 
Fails  in  mid-air,  but  gathering  at  the  base 
Remakes  itself  and  flashes  down  the  vale — 

were  published  in  Guinevere  in  1859,  but  were 
written  at  Gavarnie  in  the  Pyrenees  in  1830  as  just 
a  notebook  sketch  of  a  waterfall  from  ten  to  twelve 
hundred  feet  high.  He  had  used  this  sketch  before 
in  The  Princess  when  he  spoke  of 

The  thousand  wreathes  of  dangling  water-smoke 
That  like  a  broken  purpose  waste  in  air, 

and  a  similar  expression  of  a  picture  occurs  in  The 
Lotos-eaters — 

Some  like  a  downward  smoke,  etc. 

Maud  was  subjected  to  much  adverse  criticism, 
but  it  contains  some  of  the  most  lovely  lyrics  in 
the  English  language.  To  be  easily  intelligible  it 
should  be  read  as  a  whole,  and  right  through  at  a 
sitting.  Who  does  not  know  and  delight  in  "  Come 
into  the  garden,  Maud  "  ?  and  what  can  be  more 
charming  than  these  lines  from  Canto  XVIII  ? 

I  have  led  her  home,  my  love,  my  only  friend, 

There  is  none  like  her,  none. 

And  never  yet  so  warmly  ran  my  blood 

And  sweetly,  on  and  on — 

Calming  itself  to  the  long-wished-for  end, 

Full  to  the  banks,  close  on  the  promised  good. 

None  like  her,  none. 

Just  now  the  dry-tongued  laurel's  pattering  talk 

Seemed  her  light  foot  along  the  garden  walk, 

And  shook  my  heart  to  think  she  comes  once  more  ; 

But  even  then  I  heard  her  close  the  door, 

The  gates  of  Heaven  are  closed,  and  she  is  gone. 

There  is  none  like  her,  none. 

Nor  will  be  when  our  summers  have  deceased. 

O,  art  thou  sighing  for  Lebanon 


282  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

In  the  long  breeze  that  streams  to  thy  delicious  East, 
Sighing  for  Lebanon, 

Dark  cedar,  tho'  thy  limbs  have  here  increased, 
Upon  a  pastoral  slope  as  fair, 
And  looking  to  the  South,  and  fed 
With  honey 'd  rain  and  delicate  air, 
And  haunted  by  the  starry  head 
Of  her  whose  gentle  will  has  changed  my  fate, 
And  made  my  life  a  perfumed  altar-flame. 
*  *  *  * 

Let  no  one  ask  me  how  it  came  to  pass ; 
It  seems  that  I  am  happy,  that  to  me 
A  livelier  emerald  twinkles  in  the  grass, 
A  purer  sapphire  melts  into  the  sea. 

Can  anything  be  more  beautiful  ? 

In  1859  the  first  four  Idylls  of  the  King  were 
published.  I  saw  the  other  day  at  the  Tennyson 
Centenary  Exhibition  the  first  trial  title  page  of 
the  volume.  The  title  affixed  is 

THE  TRUE  AND  THE  FALSE 
Four  Idylls  of  the  King 

and  the  Poet  has  drawn  his  pen  through  the  first 
six  words,  leaving  only  its  present  title,  Idylls  of 
the  King. 

In  1862  the  beautiful  dedication  to  the  memory 
of  the  Prince  Consort  was  added  ;  and  the  Arthur- 
ian legend,  in  which  he  followed  close  the  version 
of  Malory,  but  engrafted  on  it  a  mystic  meaning 
not  from  Malory,  occupied  him  another  thirteen 
years.  Of  The  Holy  Grail  volume,  which  was 
published  by  Strahan  &  Co.  in  1869,  all  the  former 
volumes  being  issued  by  Moxon,  40,000  copies 
were  ordered  beforehand.  In  a  letter  to  my 
father  in  1869  he  says  : 

"  In  return  for  your  gift  [a  book  by  Ed.  Thring] 


Tennyson  Centenary  283 

I  send  you  my  new  volume  (The  Holy  Grail,  Etc.). 
Arthur  is  mystic  and  no  mere  British  Prince,  as  I 
dare  say  you  will  find  out/' 

The  volume  which  contained  the  first  four  (Enid, 
Vivien,  Elaine  and  Guinevere]  beautifully  reproduce 
the  pictures  from  Malory,  and  often  in  Malory's 
identical  language,  for,  as  the  Poet  himself  once 
pointed  out  to  me,  an  Idyll  only  means  a  picture  ; 
and  he  was  very  particular  that  it  should  be  called 
Idyll  and  not  Idyll.  In  the  Morte  d*  Arthur,  which 
is  the  best  of  all,  Tennyson  is  simply  giving  Ma- 
lory's legend,  and  in  the  four  Idylls  of  1859  there  is 
no  manifest  enforcing  of  the  mystic  meaning  of 
Arthur  and  his  story ;  though  even  then  he  had 
it  in  mind,  and  wrote  to  my  father  at  that  time, 
ten  years  before  The  Holy  Grail  volume  came  out, 
"  You  are  of  course  quite  right  about  the  Idylls, 
they  are  mystic,  Arthur  is  the  soul."  He  wrote 
much  of  the  Idylls  in  the  New  Forest,  whither  he 
would  go  and  lie  for  half  a  day  under  a  magnificent 
beech,  or  on  a  knoll  commanding  a  view  of  the 
fern-clad  slopes  which  burnt,  as  he  describes  it  in 
Pelleas  and  Ettarre,  like  a  living  fire  of  emeralds. 
Once  in  the  New  Forest  he  spoke  of  this  and  com- 
plained "  the  Spectator  said  that  was  impossible, 
but  I  saw  it!' 

After  this  date  the  Poet  constantly  contributed 
a  poem  to  the  magazines  before  he  brought  it  out 
in  a  volume. 

During  the  further  writing  of  the  Idylls  (which 
was  spread  over  thirteen  years,  and  an  introduc- 
tion to  Vivien  added  thirteen  years  later  still,  in 
1885,  called  Balin  and  Balan)  he  brought  out,  in 
1864,  that  very  popular  volume  known  as  the 


284  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Enoch  Arden  volume.  Enoch  Arden,  he  told  me, 
was  founded  on  a  true  Norfolk  story  told  him  by 
Woolner,  the  sculptor.  The  volume  contained 
also  Aylmer's  Field,  Sea  Dreams,  that  most  beauti- 
ful classic  poem  Tithonus,  which  he  rummaged 
out  of  a  drawer  where  it  had  lain  for  twenty-five 
years  for  Thackeray  to  use  in  the  Cornhill !  The 
Sailor  Boy,  a  very  choice  morsel,  his  remarkable 
Experiments  in  classic  metres,  the  pretty  Dedica- 
tion to  his  wife,  The  Grandmother,  The  Flower  and 
The  Northern  Farmer,  the  first  of  his  very  clever 
humorous  poems  in  the  Lincolnshire  dialect. 
This  poem  he  wrote  quite  correctly  in  the  dialect 
he  knew  of  old  ;  but  to  be  quite  sure  that  he  had 
got  it  right,  for  it  was  twenty-seven  years  since  he 
had  heard  it  spoken,  he  sent  it  to  a  Lincolnshire 
friend  who,  living  in  the  north  of  the  country, 
altered  it  all  into  the  dialect  he  knew,  which  was 
more  like  Yorkshire,  and  Tennyson,  then  taking 
counsel  with  his  old  friends  in  the  Somersby  neigh- 
bourhood, had  to  alter  it  all  back  again.  After 
that,  his  Lincolnshire  poems  were,  one  after  the 
other,  read  to  my  father,  or  some  member  of  our 
family,  and  he  took  the  greatest  possible  pains  to 
get  every  word  correct.  Once  when  I  went  to  see 
him,  he  asked  me  how  they  pronounced  turnips 
about  Spilsby ;  he  had  been  told  "  turmuts." 
I  said,  "  No,  '  tonnops/  "  and  some  months  later, 
going  to  see  him  again  at  Farringford,  when  I 
had  forgotten  all  about  the  "  tonnops/'  his  first 
words  to  me  were  :  "  You  were  right  about  that 
word."  He  also  said  :  "I  think  you  are  right 
about '  great '  not '  graat/  for  I  see  it  is  sometimes 
spelt  '  greet/  "  This  is  an  instance  of  his  perfect 


Tennyson  Centenary  285 

accuracy,  for  to  many  the  distinction  between 
"  greet  "  and  "  graat  "  is  hardly  perceptible.  His 
poems  were  always  printed  and  kept  by  him  for 
some  time  before  he  published  ;  and  many  a  new 
unpublished  poem  has  he  read  to  me,  as  to  others, 
under  the  strictest  promise  of  secrecy,  in  his  study 
upstairs  or  in  the  garden,  both  at  Farringford  and 
Aldworth.  Those  were  indeed  delightful  readings. 
Owd  Roa,  one  of  his  last  dialect  poems,  he  read  to  my 
wife  and  myself,  and  subsequently  he  made  me 
read  it  aloud  to  him  and  encouraged  me  to  make 
suggestions  on  certain  words,  all  of  which,  when  it 
came  out,  I  saw  he  had  adopted.  The  lines  he 
made  most  of,  speaking  them  with  a  kind  of  awe 
in  his  voice,  are  in  the  Globe  Edition  printed  in 
italics  : 

For  'e  coomed  tliruf  the  fire  wi  my  bairn  i'  'is  mouth  to  the 
winder  there, 

and  his  eye  fairly  twinkled  as  he  read  the  lines  : 

When  'e  cooms  to  be  dead 
I  thinks  as  I'd  like  fur  to  hev  soom  soort  of  a  sarvice  read, 

and  mouthed  out  with  splendid  emphasis  : 

If  I  beant  noawaay — nof  now-a-days — good    for  nowt, 
Yet  I  beant  such  a  nowt  of  all  nowts  as  'ull  hallus  do  as  'es 
bid. 

The  Holy  Grail  volume  of  1870  contained  also 
The  Coming  of  Arthur,  Pelleas  and  Ettarre,  and 
The  Passing  of  Arthur,  in  which  he  used  the  Morte 
d' Arthur  of  his  1842  volume  of  poems,  a  gem  which 
well  bears  comparison  with  any  part  of  the  Idylls 
both  for  beauty  and  pathos.  The  Northern 
Farmer  :  New  Style,  with  its  bur  den,  "  Coom  oop, 


286  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

proputty,  proputty — that's  what  I  'ears  'im  sa2y," 
is  also  in  this  volume,  and  that  truly  wonderful 
classic  poem  Lucretius,  than  which  I  know  of 
nothing  of  its  kind  finer  in  the  English  language. 
But  then  you  must  know  something  of  Lucretius 
or  you  won't  properly  appreciate  it.  Still  there 
are  bits  in  which  the  beauty  of  the  language  is 
evident  to  all,  e.g.,  the  lines  about  the  sun— 

nor  knows  he  what  he  sees ; 
King  of  the  East  although  he  seems,  and  girt 
With  song  and  flame  and  fragrance,  slowly  lifts 
His  golden  feet  on  those  empurpled  stairs 
Which  climb  into  the  windy  halls  of  heaven  : 
And  here  he  glances  on  an  eye  newborn, 
And  gets  for  greeting  but  a  wail  of  pain  ; 
And  here  he  stays  upon  a  freezing  orb 
That  fain  would  gaze  upon  him  to  the  last ; 
And  here  upon  a  yellow  eyelid  fall'n 
And  closed  by  those  who  mourn  a  friend  in  vain, 
Not  thankful  that  his  troubles  are  no  more. 

We  were  speaking  once  of  the  passage  he  had 
taken  from  Homer  and  used  both  in  this  poem  and 
also,  though  in  slightly  different  form,  in  the  old 
fragment  Morte  d*  Arthur,  about  the  abodes  of  the 
gods— 

Where  never  creeps  a  cloud  or  moves  a  wind 
Nor  ever  falls  the  least  white  star  of  snow 
Nor  ever  lowest  roll  of  thunder  moans — 

and  the  Poet  said  :  "  Yes,  that  is  Homer  ;  but  I 
improved  on  Homer,  because  7  knew  that  snow 
crystallizes  in  stars." 

Homer,  Sappho,  Virgil  and  Catullus  were  to  him 
sources  of  inspiration.  But  he  did  not  simply 
imitate  classical  forms,  for  this,  even  in  such  beauti- 
ful work  as  Swinburne's  Atalanta,  is  apt  to  give 


Tennyson  Centenary  287 

us  the  feeling  of  something  artificial.  In  (Enone, 
Ulysses,  Tithonus,  Demeter  and  Lucretius,  the  classi- 
cal tradition  "  (I  quote  from  Mr.  Arthur  Sidgwick) 
"is  there  in  full  detail,  but  by  the  poet's  art  it  is 
transmuted,  the  material  is  all  ancient,  and  so,  in 
many  subtle  ways  is  the  spirit,  but  the  handling  is 
modern  and  original.  In  his  translations  from  the 
classics,  which  are  only  too  few,  Tennyson  can  only 
be  called  consummate.  His  version  in  one  passage 
in  the  Iliad  (viii.  552)  makes  all  other  translations 
seem  second-rate.  Let  me  quote  a  few  lines. 

As  when  in  heaven  the  stars  about  the  moon 
Look  beautiful,  when  all  the  winds  are  laid, 
And  every  height  comes  out,  and  jutting  peak 
And  valley,  and  the  immeasurable  heavens, 
Break  open  to  their  highest. 

Truly  an  incomparable  rendering." 

Thus  speaks  one  who  is  himself  a  consummate 
scholar  and  translator.  Tennyson's  metrical  ex- 
periments also  are  quite  excellent,  especially  the 
Alcaics  on  Milton,  beginning — 

O  mighty-mouthed  inventor  of  harmonies, 
O  skilled  to  sing  of  Time  or  Eternity, 
God  gifted  organ- voice  of  England, 
Milton,  a  name  to  resound  for  ages ; 

Of  the  serious  classic  pieces  the  Tithonus,  written 
twenty-five  years  before  it  was  published  is,  I 
think,  the  most  touching.  To  quote  Mr.  Sidgwick 
again,  "  The  tale  tells  how  the  beautiful  youth 
Tithonus  was  beloved  of  the  Goddess  of  the  Dawn, 
and  her  love  bestowed  on  him  immortal  life,  but 
they  had  both  forgot  to  ask  for  immortal  youth. 
The  pathos  of  the  boon  granted  by  Love  at  Love's 


288  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

regret  thus  turning  out  a  curse — for  the  Gods 
themselves  cannot  recall  their  gifts — is  the  motive 
of  the  poem. 

' '  Tithonus  speaks  : — 

Alas  !  for  this  gray  shadow,  once  a  man — k 

So  glorious  in  his  beauty  and  thy  choice, 

Who  madest  him  thy  chosen,  that  he  seemed 

To  his  great  heart  none  other  than  a  God  ! 

I  asked  thee,  '  Give  me  immortality.' 

Then  didst  thou  grant  mine  asking  with  a  smile 

Like  wealthy  men  who  care  not  how  they  give  ; 

But  thy  strong  hours  indignant  work'd  their  wills, 

And  beat  me  down  and  marr'd  and  wasted  me, 

And  tho'  they  could  not  end  me,  left  me  maimed 

To  dwell  in  presence  of  immortal  youth, 

Immortal  age  beside  immortal  youth, 

And  all  I  was,  in  ashes.  ... 

Yet  hold  me  not  forever  in  thine  east : 

How  can  my  nature  longer  mix  with  thine  ? 

Coldly  thy  rosy  shadows  bathe  me,  cold 

Are  all  thy  lights,  and  cold  my  wrinkled  feet 

Upon  thy  glimmering  thresholds,  when  the  steam 

Floats  up  from  those  dim  fields  about  the  homes 

Of  happy  men  who  have  the  power  to  die, 

And  grassy  barrows  of  the  happier  dead. 

"  If,  as  has  been  well  said,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
incomparable  powers  of  poetry  to  make  sad 
things  beautiful,  what  better  instance  of  the  truth 
can  we  have  than  these  singularly  beautiful  lines  ?  " 

In  1872  Gareth  and  Lynette  and  The  Last  Tourna- 
ment came  out,  completing  the  series  of  Idylls,  and 
in  The  Last  Tournament  is  a  simile  taken  from  what 
he  as  a  lad  often  witnessed,  as  he  walked  after 
nightfall  along  the  sands  at  Mablethorpe. 

as  the  crest  of  some  slow-arching  wave. 
Heard  in  dead  night  along  that  table  shore, 
Drops  flat,  and  after  the  great  waters  break, 
Whitening  for  half  a  league,  and  thin  themselves, 
Far  over  sands  marbled  with  moon  and  cloud, 
From  less  and  less  to  nothing. 


Tennyson  Centenary  289 

This  accurately  describes  the  flat  Lincolnshire 
coast  with  its  "  interminable  "  rollers  breaking  on 
the  sands  after  a  storm,  than  which  the  Poet  al- 
ways said  he  had  never  anywhere  seen  grander ; 
and  the  chap  of  the  wave  as  it  fell  on  the  hard  level 
sand  could  be  heard  for  miles. 

It  was  on  this  shore  that  as  a  young  man  he 
often  walked,  rolling  out  his  lines  aloud  or  murmur- 
ing them  to  himself,  a  habit  which  was  also  that 
of  Wordsworth,  and  led  in  each  case  to  the  peasants 
supposing  the  Poet  to  be  only  half-witted,  and 
caused  the  Somersby  cook  to  wonder  "  what  Mr. 
Awlfred  was  always  a-praying  for/'  and  caused 
also  the  fisherman,  whom  he  met  on  the  sands  once 
at  four  in  the  morning  as  he  was  walking  without 
hat  or  coat,  and  to  whom  he  bid  good  morning,  to 
reply,  '"  Thou  poor  fool,  thou  doesn't  knaw 
whether  it  be  night  or  daa." 

In  1863,  when  I  was  still  a  schoolboy  and  thought 
it  more  than  kind  of  the  great  man  to  talk  to  me  at 
all,  he  said  :  "  A  poet's  work  should  be  done  by  the 
time  he  is  sixty.  If  I  am  to  do  anything  more  it 
must  be  in  the  next  six  years."  This  was  said 
before  the  Enoch  Arden  volume  came  out.  I  re- 
plied that  the  best  play  of  Sophocles  was  written 
when  he  was  seventy,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
volume  which  came  out  in  1889  was>  as  ne  t°ld  me 
himself,  with  the  exception  of  one  poem  which  was 
fifty  years  old,  all  of  it  the  work  of  his  eightieth 
year,  and  very  good  work  it  is.  So,  in  spite  of  his 
having  reached  his  sixtieth  year,  the  next  twenty 
years  saw  the  production  of  no  less  than  eleven 
volumes.  Among  these  were  his  plays  Harold, 
Bechet  and  Queen  Mary,  but  these  were  all  written 

u 


29P  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

after  he  had  reached  his  sixty-fifth  year,  also  the 
Holy  Grail  volume,  and  the  three  volumes,  Ballads 
and  other  Poems,  the  Teiresias  volume,  and  the 
Demeter  volume.  These  later  volumes  do  not 
possess  the  same  lyric  sweetness  that  breathes  in 
the  early  poems.  But  they  contain  some  of  his 
finest  work,  in  that  grand  poem  Rizpah,  in  the 
stirring  ballad  of  The  Revenge,  and  in  the  two 
humorous  Lincolnshire  poems  The  Village  Wife 
and  The  Spinster's  Sweet-arts,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
remarkable  poem  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After, 
which  appeared  in  1887. 

I  once  read  The  Spinster  s  Sweet-arts  at  a  penny 
reading  at  Farringford,  in  the  proper  Lincolnshire 
dialect,  and  next  morning  the  Poet  greeted  me 
with  "  You  gave  me  a  bad  night/'  "  How  ?  "  I 
said.  "  Two  of  the  maids  sleep  over  my  room, 
and  they  were  laughing  half  the  night  at  The 
Spinster's  Sweet-arts."  I  saw  by  his  humorous 
smile  that  he  forgave  me. 

The  story  is  full  of  humour,  and  as  he  told  me 
himself,  was  entirely  spun  out  of  his  own  brain  ; 
his  son  having  suggested  when  he  was  seeking  for 
a  subject  for  a  new  Lincolnshire  poem  that  he 
should  make  an  old  woman  talking  to  her  cats. 

She  names  her  cats  after  her  four  suitors,  and 
talks  to  them  sometimes  as  cats  and  sometimes  as 
if  they  were  the  men  themselves,  mixing  them 
up  in  the  same  sentence  and  even  in  the  same  line  ; 
for  instance — 

Naay,    let    ma    stroak    tha   down    tell  I   maakes    thee 

smooth  es  silk, 
But  if  I'ed  married  tha,  Robby,  thou'd  not'  a  been  worth 

thy  milk; 


Tennyson  Centenary  291 

Thou'd  niver  'a  cotch'd  ony  mice  but  'a  left  me  the  work 

to  do, 
And  'a  taaen  to  the  bottle  beside,  so  as  all  that  I  'ears 

be  true  ; 

And  again — 

Hed  I  married  the  Tommies — O  Lord, 
To  loove  an'  obaay  the  Tommies  !     I  couldn't  'a  stuck  to 

my  word. 
An'  noan  o'  my  four  sweet-arts 'ud  'a  letme'ahed  myoan 

waay, 
So  I  likes  'em  best  wi'  'taails  when  they  'evnt  a  word  to 

saay. 

It  was  from  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After 
that  Tennyson  selected  the  lines  which  he  had 
placed  upon  the  table  in  Farringford  Church  in 
memory  of  his  son  Lionel,  who,  when  a  career  in 
the  India  Office  seemed  to  be  surely  opening  before 
him,  died  on  his  passage  home  from  a  visit  to  Lord 
Dufferin,  the  Viceroy  of  India.  The  lines  are  these  : 

Truth,  for  Truth  is  Truth,  he  worshipped,  being  true  as  he 

was  brave, 
Good,  for  Good  is  Good,  he  followed,  yet  he  looked  beyond 

the  grave. 

*  *  *  * 

Truth  for  Truth,  and  Good  for  Good  !     The  Good,  the 

True,  the  Pure,  the  Just, 
Take  the  charm  "  for  ever  "  from  them,  and  they  crumble 

into  dust. 

Nothing  annoyed  him  more  than  the  remarks  of 
stupid  critics,  for  he  was  always  unduly  sensitive 
to  criticism,  and  when  they  took  the  old  man  in 
the  poem  to  be  himself  he  was  both  angry  and  hurt. 
"  Taking  me/'  he  complained,  "  for  that  old  white- 
headed  dreamer.  I,  who  have  not  a  white  hair 
in  my  head/'  and  he  was  then  seventy-eight. 

On  his  eightieth   birthday,  August  1889,  my 


2 92  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

brother,  Canon  Rawnsley,  sent  a  very  pretty 
sonnet  to  the  aged  Poet,  to  which  both  the  Poet 
and  his  wife  replied.  Lady  Tennyson  said  it  was 
quite  the  best  of  the  many  birthday  poems  he  had 
received,  and  he  wrote  himself : 

"  DEAR  HARDWICKE, — 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  sonnet ;  it  is  one  of  your 
best,  but  it  somewhat  abashes  me,  for  I  am  or 
feel  myself  overpraised. 

"  Ever  yours, 
"  TENNYSON. 

"  Sir  Andrew  Clark  has  forbidden  me  for  the 
present  to  write  letters,  but  he  told  me  yesterday  an 
anecdote  about  himself  and  the  Shah  which  sounds 
like  a  bit  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  which  I  must 
violate  his  order  to  tell  you.  The  Shah  had  much 
wished  to  see  the  Hakim,  the  great  English  Physi- 
cian, and  sent  for  him,  but  Clark,  who  had  promised 
me  that  he  would  come  down  to  Aldworth  on  that 
day,  neglected  to  meet  the  King  of  Kings,  whereat 
the  King  of  Kings  was  infinitely  wroth,  and,  as  Clark 
said,  '  If  I  had  been  one  of  his  Persian  subjects  in 
Persia  would  like  enough  to  have  cut  off  my  head/ 
but  when  H.M.  learnt  that  the  Hakim  had  gone 
down  into  the  country  to  look  after  the  health  of 
his  old  friend  the  poet,  he  made  him  one  of  the 
great  Persian  Order  of  the  Lion  and  the  Sword/1 

Always  desiring  to  be  accurate,  the  Poet  wrote 
again  next  day  to  my  brother  a  line  to  say  that  the 
Order  was  not  the  Lion  and  the  Sword  but  the 
Lion  and  the  Sun.  The  sonnet  is  a  very  good  one, 
and  is  published  in  a  volume  called  Valete. 


Tennyson  Centenary  293 


TO   LORD   TENNYSON   ON   HIS   EIGHTIETH 
BIRTHDAY 

August  6th,  1889. 

The  four  score  years  that  blanch  the  heads  of  men 

Touch  not  the  immortals,  and  we  bring  to-day 

No  flowers  to  twine  with  laurel  and  with  bay, 

Seeing  the  spring  is  with  thee  now,  as  when 

Above  the  wold  and  marsh  and  mellowing  fen 

Thy  song  bade  England  listen.     Powers  decay, 

Hands  fail,  and  eyes,  tongues  scarce  their  will   can  say, 

But  still  Heaven's  fire  burns  in  thy  hollow  pen. 

Oh  singer  of  the  knightly  days  of  old  ! 

Oh  ringer  of  the  knell  to  lust  and  hate  ! 

Oh  bringer  of  new  hope  from  memory's  shrine  ! 

When  God  doth  set  in  Heaven  thy  harp  of  gold 

The  souls  that  made  this  generation  great 

Shall  own  the  voice  that  nerved  their  hearts  was  thine. 


That  in  1889,  at  the  age  of  eighty,  he  should 
have  published  Demeter  and  other  poems,  all  the 
work  of  his  eightieth  year,  must  be  pronounced  a 
most  remarkable  feat.  Besides  Demeter  and 
Persephone,  Owd  Roa  is  in  this  volume,  and 
Romney's  Remorse,  a  strong  and  pathetic  poem,  The 
Ring  and  The  Leper's  Bride  and  Vastness.  All 
these  the  Poet  read  to  me  in  MS.,  and  in  The 
Leper  s  Bride  he  had  a  stanza,  or  two,  which  he 
read,  and  then  said,  "  My  wife  and  son  won't  let 
me  put  those  in  ;  I  don't  know  why,  I  see  no  harm 
in  them/'  They  were  very  fine  lines  and  very 
forcible  ;  but  perhaps  rather  too  outspoken  for 
our  age.  But  all  his  life  he  had  acknowledged 
the  fineness  and  correctness  of  his  wife's  criticism, 
and  never  went  counter  to  it.  The  Throstle, 
with  its  musical  imitation  of  the  bird's  song,  is 
like  one  of  his  early  lyrics  in  brightness  and  joyous 


294  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

life,  and  that  triumph  of  poesy,  Crossing  the  Bar, 
concludes  the  volume. 


CROSSING  THE  BAR  * 

Sunset  and  Evening  star 

And  one  clear  call  for  me  ! 
And  may  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar 

When  I  put  out  to  sea, 

But  such  a  tide  as  moving  seems  asleep, 

Too  full  for  sound  and  foam, 
When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 

Turns  again  home. 

Twilight  and  evening  bell 

And  after  that  the  dark  ! 
And  may  there  be  no  sadness  of  farewell 

When  I  embark  : 

For  tho'  from  out  our  bourne  of  Time  and  place 

The  flood  may  bear  me  far, 
I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face 

WThen  I  have  crost  the  bar. 

This  was  composed  as  he  crossed  from  Lymington 
to  Yarmouth  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  drove  on 
to  Farringford,  and  was  written  down  at  once. 
It  is  truly  an  inspiration.  He  desired  that  this 
poem  should  always  be  put  last  in  any  subsequent 
edition  of  his  works.  Three  months  after  this 
1889  volume  came  out,  I  met  in  the  train  at  Win- 
chester an  eminent  scholar  (Dr.  Montagu  Butler, 
Master  of  Trinity,  Cambridge),  who  had  made  an 
elegant  translation  of  the  lines  into  Latin  elegiacs. 
He  asked  me  what  I  thought  the  Poet  meant  by 
the  notable  lines,  "  WThen  that  which  drew  from 
out  the  boundless  deep  turns  again  home/'  I 
said,  "  The  wave  in  the  first  instance/'  He  had 

1  Printed  by  kind  permission  of  Messrs.  Macmillan. 


Tennyson  Centenary  295 

taken  it  as  the  soul,  but  afterwards  felt  that  it 
might  be  the  wave,  so  he  gave  me  an  alternative 
version.  Two  days  later  I  was  at  Farringford  and 
asked  the  Poet  which  he  meant ;  he  said,  "  Of 
course  I  meant  both."  This  was  in  March  1890. 
Later  I  obtained  a  copy  done  into  Greek  Sapphics, 
by  Professor  Lushington.  I  also  have  a  copy  of 
Tears,  Idle  Tears  done  into  Greek  Iambics,  by 
Edward  Thring,  and  a  letter  from  his  wife  to  my 
father,  saying  that  Tennyson  did  not  think  the 
metre  suitable  for  the  poem.  It  is  one  of  the 
sweetest  lyrics  ever  written  : 

Tears,  idle  tears,  I  know  not  what  they  mean, 
Tears  from  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair 
Rise  in  the  heart,  and  gather  to  the  eyes, 
In  looking  on  the  happy  Autumn-fields 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more. 

Fresh  as  the  first  beam  glittering  on  a  sail, 
That  brings  our  friends  up  from  the  under  world, 
Sad  as  the  last  which  reddens  over  one 
That  sinks  with  all  we  love  below  the  verge  ; 
So  sad,  so  fresh,  the  days  that  are  no  more. 

Ah,  sad  and  strange  as  in  dark  summer  dawns 

The  earliest  pipe  of  half-awaken'd  birds 

To  dying  ears,  when  unto  dying  eyes 

The  casement  slowly  grows  a  glimmering   square  ; 

So  sad,  so  strange,  the  days  that  are  no  more.    $ 

Dear  as  remembered  kisses  after  death, 
And  sweet  as  those  by  hopeless  fancy  feign' d 
On  lips  that  are  for  others  ;    deep  as  love, 
Deep  as  first  love,  and  wild  with  all  regret; 
O  Death  in  Life,  the  days  that  are  no  more. 

In  all  his  latest  work  there  is  evidence  how  con- 
stantly  the  thought  of  life  hereafter  was  in  his 
mind,  and  the  smallness  of  mortal  man  compared 


296  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

with  the  vastness  of  the  universe,  and  still  more 
of  Heaven  and  immortality.  I  must  not  omit  to 
notice  the  lines  Far,  Far  Away.  In  his  earliest 
days  these  words,  he  said,  had  always  a  singular 
charm  for  him,  which  in  his  old  age  he  so  touchingly 
describes.  The  heading  of  the  poem,  which  is  as 
follows,  is  : 

FAR,  FAR  AWAY 
(For  Music). 

What  sight  so  lured  him  thro'  the  fields  he  knew 
As  where  earth's  green  stole  into  heaven's  own  hue, 
Far,  far  away  ? 

What  sound  was  dearest  in  his  native  dells  ? 
The  mellow  lin-lan-lone  of  evening  bells, 
Far,  far  away. 

What  vague  world-whisper,  mystic  pain  or  joy, 
Thro'  those  three  words  would  haunt  him  when  a  boy, 
Far,  far  away  ? 

A  whisper  from  his  dawn  of  life  ?  a  breath 
From  some  fair  dawn  beyond  the  doors  of  death, 
Far,  far  away  ? 

Far,  far,  how  far  ?  from  o'er  the  gates  of  Birth, 
The  faint  horizons,  all  the  bounds  of  earth, 
Far,  far  away  ? 


O  dying  words,  can  music  make  you  live 
Far,  far  away  ? 

He  once  told  my  brother  that  one  of  the  lines  he 
was  proudest  of  in  all  his  writings  was  "  The 
mellow  lin-lan-lone  of  evening  bells/' 

He  alludes  to  the  charm  these  words,   "  far, 
far  away,"  had  for  him  when  a  boy  in  a  poem  in  his 


Tennyson  Centenary  297 

later  days  called  The  Ancient  Sage  (see  page  246, 
Ballads,  and  Other  Poems),  and  he  there  goes  on  to 
speak  of  a  singular  power  which  he  possessed  as 
a  young  man.  About  this  he  once  told  me  a  very 
curious  thing,  viz.,  how  at  times,  in  his  early  man- 
hood, he  could  by  softly  repeating  his  own  name 
over  and  over  put  himself  into  a  sort  of  trance,  in 
which  he  seemed  to  be  away  from  the  body,  and 
to  be  able,  as  it  were,  to  stand  aside  and  see  "  the 
wheels  of  the  world  pass  under  him/'  being  all  the 
time  awake  and  his  mind  clear  and  active.  The 
passage  is  as  follows  : 


To-day  ?  but  what  of  yesterday.  ?  for  oft 

On  me,  when  boy,  there  came  what  then  I  call'd, 

Who  knew  no  books  and  no  philosophies, 

In  my  boy-phrase  "  The  Passion  of  the  Past." 

The  first  grey  streak  of  earliest  summer-dawn, 

The  last  long  stripe  of  waning  crimson  gloom, 

As  if  the  late  and  early  were  but  one — 

A  height,  a  broken  grange,  a  grove,  a  flower, 

Had  murmurs,   "  Lost  and  gone  and  lost  and  gone  !  " 

A  breath,  a  whisper — some  divine  farewell — 

Desolate  sweetness — far  and  far  away — 

What  had  he  loved,  what  had  he  lost,  the  boy  ? 

I  know  not,  and  I  speak  of  what  has  been. 

And  more,  my  son  !   for  more  than  once  when  I 
Sat  all  alone,  revolving  in  myself 
The  word  that  is  the  symbol  of  myself, 
The  mortal  limit  of  the  self  was  loosed, 
And  passed  into  the  Nameless,  as  a  cloud 
Melts  into  Heaven.     I  touch'd  my  limbs,  the  limbs 
Were  strange,  not  mine,  and  yet  no  shade  of  doubt, 
But  utter  clearness,  and  thro'  loss  of  Self 
The  gain  of  such  large  life  as  match'd  with  ours 
Were  Sun  to  spark — unshadowable  in  words, 
Themselves  but  shadows  of  a  shadow- world. 


It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  poem  of  his  latest 
years  with  what,  after  a  period  of  doubt  and  ques- 


298  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

tioning,  though  not  without  hope,  he  said  in  In 

Memoriam  : 

I  falter  where  I  firmly  trod, 

And  falling  with  my  weight  of  cares 
Upon  the  great  world's  altar  stairs, 

That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God. 

I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all 

And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope. 

But  at  the  end  of  this  poem,  The  Ancient  Sage, 
when  now  his  faith  in  the  Love  of  God  is  stronger 
than  his  doubt,  he  gives  his  final  message — 

Let  be  thy  wail  and  help  thy  fellow  men, 
And  send  the  day  into  the  darkened  heart ; 
And   more, — think   well !     Do   well  will   follow  thought, 
And  in  the  fatal  sequence  of  this  world 
An  evil  thought  may  soil  thy  children's  blood. 
*  *  *  * 

But  lay  thine  uphill  shoulder  to  the  wheel 

And  climb  the  Mount  of  Blessing,  whence,  if  thou 

Look    higher,    then, — perchance — thou    mayest — beyond 

A  hundred  ever  rising  mountain  lines, 

And  past  the  range  of  Night  and  Shadow — see 

The  High-heaven  dawn  of  more  than  Mortal  day 

Strike  on  the  Mount  of  Vision  ! 

In  1892,  sixty  years  after  his  "  Lyrical  Poems/' 
two  small  volumes  came  out.  The  first,  in  April, 
was  the  Play  about  Robin  Hood  and  Maid  Marian, 
called  The  Foresters ;  the  second,  in  October,  was 
issued  three  weeks  after  his  death  ;  this  was  called 
The  Death  of  (Enone,  and  Other  Poems,  and  con- 
tained a  very  pretty  dedication  to  his  wife,  and 
when  we  recall  the  fact  that  between  the  writing 
of  them  and  the  publishing  the  Poet  had  himself 
crossed  the  bar,  a  touch  of  solemnity  is  given  to  the 


Tennyson  Centenary  299 

volume  in  which  the  four  last  pieces  are  called 
Faith,  The  Silent  Voices,  God  and  the  Universe,  and 
The  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Clarence.  We  were  at 
Farringford  in  January  1892,  when  he  was  working 
at  the  last  poem.  He  read  us  what  he  had  done, 
which  was  seven  lines,  and  the  finished  poem  had 
these  lines  in  the  middle,  four  being  placed  before 
them  and  six  after  them.  They  end  thus  :  x 

The  face  of  death  is  toward  the  sun  of  Life, 
His  shadow  darkens  earth ;  his  truer  name 
Is  "  onward,"  no  discordance  in  the  roll 
And  march  of  that  Eternal  Harmony 
Whereto  the  worlds  beat  time,  tho'  faintly  heard 
Until  the  great  Hereafter.     Mourn  in  hope. 

A  poet  who  could  write  like  that  at  the  age  of 
eighty-two  cannot  be  said  to  have  lost  the  Divine 
fire  whilst  life  was  in  him. 

We  have  now  gone  through  the  different  volumes 
of  verse  chronologically ;  and  if  we  had  to  choose 
one  poem  or  volume  of  Tennyson  on  which  his 
fame  should  rest  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others 
we  should  all,  I  think,  without  hesitation  fix  on 
In  Memoriam.  Sir  Henry  Taylor  used  to  say  that 
the  introduction  to  In  Memoriam  was  the  finest 
Christian  poem  in  the  language,  and  it  would  be 
difficult  to  find  any  literary  work  which  has 
done  more  than  In  Memoriam  to  resolve  doubt 

1  It  is  very  interesting  to  compare  these  with  the  last 
six  lines  in  Love  and  Death,  published  in  the  1830  volume — 

Thou  art  the  shadow  of  Life,  and  as  the  tree 
Stands  in  the  sun  and  shadows  all  beneath, 
So  in  the  light  of  great  eternity 
Life  eminent  creates  the  shade  of  death  ; 
The  shadow  passeth  when  the  tree  shall  fall, 
But  I  shall  reign  for  ever  over  all. 


3<x>  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

and  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man.  Like  Mil- 
ton's Lycidas  and  Shelley's  Adonais  it  treats  of 
the  death  of  a  rarely-gifted  man  snatched  away 
before  his  time.  But  in  addition  to  being,  as 
Gladstone  put  it,  "  perhaps  the  richest  oblation 
ever  offered  by  the  affection  of  friendship  at  the 
tomb  of  the  departed/'  it  differs  from  the  other 
two  poems  as  a  living  tree  differs  from  a  beautiful 
marble  sculpture,  for  it  is  the  living  creed  of  the 
author.  Bishop  Westcott  saw  in  it  "  (in  the  face 
of  the  frankest  acknowledgment  of  every  difficulty) 
a  splendid  faith  in  the  growing  purpose  of  the  sum 
of  life,  and  in  the  noble  destiny  of  the  individual 
man  as  he  offers  himself  for  the  fulfilment  of  his 
little  part."  A  very  different  writer,  Professor 
Sidgwick,  remarks  that  "  Tennyson  differs  from 
Wordsworth  because  Wordsworth  in  his  attitude 
towards  Nature  leaves  Science  unregarded.  The 
Nature  for  which  he  stirred  our  feelings  was  Na- 
ture known  by  simple  observation  and  interpreted 
by  religion  and  sympathetic  intuition."  But  to 
Tennyson,  though  a  constant  and  close  observer 
of  all  the  beauties  of  Nature,  "  the  Physical  world 
was  always  the  world  known  to  us  by  physical 
science,  and  the  Scientific  view  dominates  his 
thoughts  even  when  he  feels  its  inadequacy  to 
satisfy  our  deepest  needs/'  when 

A  warmth  within  the  heart  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And,  like  a  man  in  wrath,  the  heart 

Stood  up  and  answered,  "  I  have  felt." 

Sir   Norman   Lockyer,    in    his   book  Tennyson 
as  a  Student  and  Poet  of  Nature  speaks  of  him  as 


Tennyson  Centenary  301 

a  poet  who,  beyond  all  others  that  have  ever  lived, 
combined  the  gift  of  expression  with  an  unceasing 
interest  in  the  causes  of  things  and  in  the  working 
out  of  Nature's  laws. 

Of  all  his  forerunners  Dante  alone  wedded  science 
to  song,  but  science  in  Dante's  day  was  restricted 
to  Astronomy  and  Medicine,  and  it  was  the  old 
world  Astronomy,  before  Galileo,  Tycho  Brahe  or 
even  Copernicus  and  was  still  inextricably  inter- 
twined with  religion.  Dante's  seven  Heavens 
surrounding  the  earth  and  seven  Hells  inside  it 
were  blown  to  atoms  by  the  discoveries  in  earth 
and  sky  of  Columbus  and  Galileo.  Hence,  though 
Milton  300  years  later  used  Dante's  cosmogony,  he 
used  it  with  large  reservations  and  larger  additions, 
whilst  Tennyson  after  the  lapse  of  another  three 
centtiries  was  able  to  drop  the  medieval  ideas  about 
Heaven  and  Hell  altogether. 

Tennyson  throughout  his  life  was  immensely 
interested  in  the  stars,  and  Sir  Norman  notes  his 
general  interest  in  and  knowledge  of  all  the  scientific 
questions  of  the  day.  "  Tennyson,"  he  says,  "  has 
shown  that  science  and  poetry,  so  far  from  being 
antagonistic,  must  for  ever  advance  side  by  side," 
and  he  especially  dwells  on  his  extreme  accuracy 
as  an  observer  and  the  exquisite  felicity  of  his  lan- 
guage. In  this  he  rivals  Virgil  whose  happy  choice 
of  metre  and  language  he  himself  describes  in  his 
poem  to  Virgil.  This  very  notable  poem  is  headed 

TO  VIRGIL, 

Written  at  the  request  of  the  Mantuans 
for  the  nineteenth  centenary  of  Virgil's  death. 

This  was  in    1881,  as  he  died    B.C.   19.    The 


3O2  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

metre  is  singular,  and  though  they  are  printed  in 
four  lines  they  are  really  rhyming  couplets,  each 
line  having  eight  trochees  and  a  long  syllable.  I 
will  quote  a  few  stanzas. 


Roman  Virgil,  thou  that  singest, 
Ilion's  lofty  temples  robed  in  fire, 

Ilion  falling,  Rome  arising, 
wars  and  filial  faith,  and  Dido's  pyre  ; 


Landscape-lover,  lord  of  language, 

more  than  he  that  sang  the  Works  and  Days, 
All  the  chosen  coin  of  fancy 

flashing  out  from  many  a  golden  phrase. 

in 

Thou  that  singest  wheat  and  woodland, 

tilth  and  vineyard,  hive  and  horse  and  herd  ; 

All  the  charm  of  all  the  Muses 
often  flowering  in  a  lonely  word. 

This  characteristic  of  Virgil  must  be  familiar  to 
all  scholars.  I  will  only  mention  one  instance,  that 
beautiful  and  touching  line  in  ^Eneid  VI,  about  the 
pale  ghosts  on  the  shores  of  Acheron 

Tendebantque  manus  ripae  ulterioris  amore. 

How  the  pathos  of  the  picture  is  enhanced  by  the 
appealing  attitude  of  those  outstretched  arms, 
and  the  unutterable  longing  conveyed  by  the  one 
word  tendebantque,  and  then  the  musical  charm  of 
the  last  two  words  !  ulterioris  amore. 

There  are  seven  more  stanzas,  the  last  of  which 
runs  thus — 

I  salute  thee,  Mantovano, 

I  that  loved  thee  since  my  day  begang 


Tennyson  Centenary  303 

Wielder  of  the  stateliest  measure 
ever  moulded  by  the  lips  of  man. 

I  look  on  that  last  as  one  of  the  finest  lines  in 
English  Literature. 

Charles  Kingsley  calls  the  author  of  In  Memoriam 
"  the  deliberate  champion  of  vital  Christianity 
and  of  an  orthodoxy  the  more  sincere  because  it 
has  worked  upwards  through  the  abyss  of  doubt, 
the  more  mighty  for  good  because  it  justifies  and 
consecrates  the  aesthetics  and  the  philosophy  of  the 
present  age/' 

Besides  this,  beyond  any  other  of  his  poems,  it 
reveals  to  us  the  man,  and  all  the  more  because  it  is 
like  a  private  diary,  for  the  Poet  himself  has  told 
us  that  he  wrote  the  cantos  without  the  least  inten- 
tion of  publishing  them  until  he  found  that  he  had 
written  so  many.  This  adds  greatly  to  its  interest, 
and  then  the  beauty  of  the  thoughts  is  equalled 
by  the  charm  of  the  language  and  its  melody,  and, 
as  it  is  filled  with  pictures  of  home  and  college  life, 
and  of  English  scenery  throughout  the  rolling  year, 
it  is  relieved  from  monotony,  and,  as  Kingsley 
says,  "  when  too  sombre  it  is  lightened  by  sweet 
reminiscences  ;  when  too  light  recalled  to  grief  by 
stanzas  that  have  the  deep  solemnity  of  a  passing- 
bell."  The  peculiar  metre  too,  has  a  fascination. 
The  Poet  thought  that  he  had  invented  it,  but  was 
told,  after  it  came  out,  that  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and 
Ben  Jonson  had  both  used  it. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  early  years  of  the  Poet 
that,  having  once  lost  the  MS.  of  his  first  volume, 
Poems,  Chiefly  Lyrical,  and  having  reproduced 
them  all  from  memory,  he,  in  February  1850, 


304  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

left  the  whole  MS.  of  In  Memoriam  in  a  cupboard 
in  his  lodgings  in  London,  and  wrote  to  Coventry 
Patmore  two  or  three  weeks  afterwards  to  try  and 
recover  for  him  "  my  book  of  Elegies,  a  long 
butcher  ledger-like  book/'  which  fortunately 
Patmore  was  able  to  do. 

I  will  not  attempt  an  analysis  of  In  Memoriam. 
But  I  once  asked  Tennyson  whether  he  did  not 
think  such  an  analysis  would  be  a  great  help,  and 
whether  he  would  not  write  one.  He  answered, 
"  It  has  been  done,  and  very  well  by  that  lady," 
meaning  Miss  Chapman.  I  will  only  here  say  with 
Mr.  Walters  that  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  poem 
is  "  that  all  is  well,  and  that  darkness  shall  be  clear, 
that  God  and  Time  are  the  only  interpreters,  that 
Love  is  living,  that  the  Immortal  is  in  us." 

Probably  no  poem  is  so  largely  quoted  in  ser- 
mons, speeches,  books  and  papers,  a  sign  that  truths 
which  all  acknowledge  are  here  most  aptly  and 
beautifully  expressed.  The  whole  of  English 
literature  for  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  tessel- 
ated  with  beautiful  expressions  drawn  from  all 
parts  of  Tennyson's  works.  But  I  know  of  no 
more  apt  quotation  than  this  which  the  Poet 
himself  related  to  me.  He  had  gone  to  Osborne 
to  see  Queen  Victoria  ;  she  received  him  and  put 
him  at  his  ease  at  once  by  pointing  to  a  chair  and 
saying  :  "  You  and  I,  Mr.  Tennyson,  are  old  people, 
and  we  like  to  sit  down/'  They  talked  ;  Tennyson 
lamented  the  socialistic  and  irreligious  tendency 
of  the  age,  and  spoke  rather  despairingly ;  the 
Queen  simply  replied — 

And  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill. 

(In  Memoriam,  51.} 


Tennyson  Centenary  305 

"  I  thought/'  added  the  Poet,  "  that  that  was  very 
pretty  of  the  Queen  to  answer  me  from  my  own 
writing." 

Having  heard  thus  much  about  his  poems,  you 
may  perhaps  like  to  hear  something  about  the  man. 
He  was  always  remarkable  to  look  at,  with  his  fine 
head,  his  olive  complexion,  and  abundant  black 
hair.  This  never  turned  grey,  but  as  it  thinned 
away  in  his  later  years  it  allowed  the  dome-shaped 
forehead  to  show,  and  occasioned  the  remark 
which  he  told  me  he  was  really  proud  to  have 
heard  from  a  mason  who  passed  him  in  the  street 
in  London :  "There  goes  a  Shakespeare-like  fellow. " 
Tennyson  was  also  always  remarkable  to  listen  to  as 
well  as  to  look  at,  being  very  widely  read,  possessed 
of  a  splendid  memory,  always  original,  and  with 
an  inexhaustible  fund  of  humour.  He  was  a  man 
of  large  heart  and  liberal  views.  His  tobacco  jar 
held  two  gallons  ;  he  drank  his  tea  in  a  bowl,  say- 
ing, "  a  teacup  is  such  a  niggardly  allowance," 
and  he  took  his  port  by  the  bottle.  My  father, 
staying  with  him  once  at  Aldworth,  was  much 
amused  at  seeing  him  decant  a  bottle  of  port  and 
put  a  glass  of  water  into  the  decanter,  saying, 
"  Do  you  know  why  I  do  that,  Drummond  ? 
It  is  because  it  makes  it  wholesomer  and  gives 
me  one  glass  more/' 

He  was  always  very  approachable  by  children 
and  one  of  my  earliest  memories  of  the  Poet  is  of 
him  sitting  on  the  sofa  at  Shiplake  and  saying  : — 

"  And  oh,  far  worse  than  all  beside, 
He  whipped  his  Mary  till  she  cried." 

"  What  is  that  ?  "  I  said.    "  Oh,  you  will  know  to- 

x 


306  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

morrow."  I  could  not  make  it  out,  as  I  had  for- 
gotten that  to-morrow  would  be  my  birthday,  and 
my  father  and  the  Poet  had  driven  over  to  Reading 
and  brought  back  for  me  that  most  delightful  of  all 
children's  books  The  English  Stmwelpeter. 

From  his  early  manhood  his  eyesight  had  been 
weak,  and  he  held  his  book  close  to  his  face  to 
read  by  day,  and  by  night  often  held  a  candle 
between  his  eyes  and  the  book. 

The  moody  attacks  of  his  early  manhood  later 
in  life  left  him ;  and  never  was  there  a  more 
delightful  companion  at  table  or  on  a  walk,  when 
he  would  show  himself  to  be  a  perfect  mine  of 
memories  and  good  stories.  Sir  Frederick  Locker 
Lampson,  whose  daughter  married  Tennyson's 
son  Lionel,  says,  ' '  when  Alfred  is  quite  at  his  best 
there  is  no  one  like  him."  His  unconventionality 
always  remained,  but  his  kindness  and  simplicity 
increased  with  years.  He  was  a  good  listener  as 
well  as  a  good  talker  ;  but  he  was  a  great  stickler 
for  the  proper  use  of  English,  and  pulled  me  up 
sharply  for  using  the  word  "  awful."  '  You  have 
said  that  twice  this  morning ;  I  can't  bear  the 
word."  "  Yes,"  I  said,  "  I  hate  the  use  of  the 
word,  too,  but  each  time  I  have  used  it  in  its  legiti- 
mate sense,  still  I  had  better  have  done  without  it." 
On  another  occasion,  as  we  were  looking  through  a 
drawer  full  of  letters  to  find  a  particularly  friendly 
one  he  had  lately  had  from  Browning,  he  stopped 
me  at  the  word  knowledge :  "  Knowledge  I  say,  and 
I  think  it  is  right."  "  Do  you  say  acknowledge 
too  ?  "  He  thought  a  little  and  then  said  :  "  Yes,  I 
do  ;  it  is  a  finer  sound  too."  Sound  was  much  to 
him  ;  and  of  all  spoken  sounds,  he  said  that  the 


Tennyson  Centenary  307 

language  of  Homer  spoken  by  a  Northern  or  Teu- 
tonic tongue  was  the  grandest/'1  A  fine-sounding 
line  had  a  great  attraction  for  him.  Walking  on 
Blackdown  one  day,  he  sat  down  on  the  heather 
at  the  side  of  a  deep  worn  cart  track  and  spoke 
Burns'  lines  : 


Go  fetch  to  me  a  pint  o'  wine, 
And  fill  it  in  a  silver  tassie  ; 
That  I  may  drink  before  I  go 
A  service  to  my  bonnie  lassie  : 
*  *  *  * 

The  trumpets  sound,  the  banners  fly, 
The  glittering  spears  are  ranked  ready, 
The  shouts  o'  war  are  heard  afar, 
The  battle  closes  thick  and  bloody ; 


He  rolled  out  the  last  lines  with  delight  and  admira- 
tion, and  said :  "I  would  have  given  anything 
to  have  written  that/'  On  another  occasion, 
years  before,  at  Shiplake,  having  read  aloud 
Matthew  Arnold's  Forsaken  Merman,  he  said : 
"  I  should  like  to  have  written  that/' 

It  was  interesting  to  me,  when,  as  a  lover  of 
Burns,  in  September,  1909,  I  visited  Dumfries, 
to  find  in  Burns'  cottage,  and  in  the  room  in  which 
he  died,  this  poem  written  out  and  signed  on  the 
first  page  of  a  small  quarto  volume  or  note  book 
by  the  Poet's  own  hand  in  fine  bold  characters 
nearly  a  quarter  of  an  inch  long  ;  and  in  a  book 
close  by  he  had  written  his  name  thus :  "  R. 
Burns,  The  Ayrshire  Poet." 

1  What  finer  sound,  he  would  say,  can  you  have  than  the 
oft-recurring  Tr6\v<j>\ol(rpoio  ^aXacrcr^s?  But  the  Greeks 
never  polu  floisboied  they  polu  fleesbeed. 


308  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

Tennyson  once  told  my  sister  that  he  thought  the 
most  beautiful  lines  he  knew  were  in  the  anony- 
mous poem  Forsaken : 

O  waly  waly  up  the  bank, 
And  waly  waly  down  the  brae, 
And  waly  waly  yon  burn-side 
Where  I  and  my  Love  wont  to  gae  ! 

ending  with — 

And,  O  !  if  my  young  babe  were  born, 
And  set  upon  the  nurse's  knee, 
And  I  mysell  were  dead  and  gane, 
And  the  green  grass  growing  over  me  ! 

Of  all  English  poets  after  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
Shakespeare  and  Milton,  he  thought  most  of  Words- 
worth and  Keats.  "  If  Keats  had  lived  he  would 
have  been  the  first  of  us  all/'  he  once  said  to  me  ; 
and  his  admiration  of  Burns  was  very  great  too. 
His  son  tells  us  this  in  the  Memoir.  "  Read/' 
he  said,  "  the  exquisite  songs  of  Burns,  each  per- 
fect as  a  berry  and  radiant  as  a  dewdrop."  And 
again  :  "  There  never  was  an  immortal  poet  if  he 
be  not  one/'  He  had  the  greatest  reverence  and 
admiration  for  Wordsworth,  who  in  turn  said  he 
had  been  trying  all  his  life  to  write  a  Pastoral  like 
Dora  and  had  not  succeeded. 

In  Elaine,  Lancelot  says  to  Lavaine  : 

....  in  me  there  dwells 
No  greatness,  save  it  be  some  far-off  touch 
Of  greatness  to  know  well  I  am  not  great. 
There  is  the  man. 

Tennyson  once  said:  "When  I  wrote  that,  I 
was  thinking  of  myself  and  Wordsworth. 

All  his  life  he  spent  many  an  hour  in  polishing, 
and  kept  his  MS.  and  even  the  printed  poem  by  him 


Tennyson  Centenary  309 

for  a  long  time  before  publishing,  and  never  let 
it  go  until  he  had  satisfied  himself  about  each  line 
and  word  (cf .  Tennyson  Memories,  page  144). 

To  take  an  instance — on  one  occasion  at  Aldworth, 
on  my  first  visit  there,  I  saw  him  walking  about 
the  room  looking  at  an  etui  case  of  his  wife's  which 
he  held  in  his  hand,  in  which  was  set  a  piece  of 
stone  called  avanturine,  brown  with  innumerable 
gold  sparkles  in  it.  "  Look  at  it,"  he  said,  "  see 
the  stars  in  it !  worlds  within  worlds."  He  was 
clearly  bent  on  making  a  simile  from  it  for  the  poem 
he  then  had  in  hand,  Gareth  andLynette.  He  had 
the  first  line  in  three  different  ways : 

Shone  gem  or  jewel  on  their  dewy  hair. 

There  glanced 
Or  dew  or  jewel  from  their  golden  hair. 

Or  gem  or  jewel  sparkled  in  their  hair. 

The  second  line  in  each  case  being  : 

Like  stars  within  the  stone  avanturine. 

But  when  the  poem  came  out  it  was  different  from 
all  these  and  read  thus  : 

And  the  hair 

All  over  glanced  with  dewdrop  or  with  gem 
Like  sparkles  in  the  stone  avanturine. 

Indeed  accuracy  and  melody  are  characteristic 
of  all  his  work.  Certainly  his  truthfulness  to 
nature  was  remarkable,  also  the  purity  of  his 
writings  is  a  thing  to  be  grateful  for.  He  wished, 
he  said,  to  go  down  to  posterity  as  Wordsworth 
will  go  down  to  it,  as  a  poet  "  who  uttered  nothing 
base."  One  of  his  fears  was  that  he  should,  by  the 


310  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

use  of  selections  from  his  poems  for  school  books, 
became  distasteful  to  English  boys  and  girls,  as 
Horace  was  to  Byron.  He  said  to  me  one  day 
with  vehemence,  "  Don't  let  them  make  a  school 
book  of  me,  the  boys  will  hate  me." 

But  it  is  not  so,  I  think.     My  experience  is  that 
the  first  introduction  of  boys  and  girls  to  Tennyson 
is  the  beginning  to  them  of  a  delight  which  never 
fails,  and  I  only  hope  that  the  boys  and  girls  and 
young  people  of  this  generation  will  not  take  the 
critics  for  their  guide  who  already  begin  to  talk  of 
Tennyson  as  early  Victorian  and  semi-obsolete, 
but  will  just  read  him  themselves,  and  allow  their 
own  judgment  to  guide  them.    They  will  never 
light  on  a  poet  who  will  give  them  more  pleasure, 
and,  though  he  may  not  have  a  strong  power  of 
invention  or  be  able  to  make  his  characters  live  on 
the  page  as  some  have  done,  he  has  delineated  many 
characters  so  that  his  lines  cannot  be  read  without 
emotion,  and  has  left  an  imperishable  mark  on 
English  Literature,  weaving  the  golden  thread  of 
poetry  into  the  texture  of  our  lives  and  enriching 
the  language  with  many  a   noble  thought  set  in 
language  of  unsurpassed  beauty.    Undoubtedly  he 
is  one  of  the  immortals.    After  all,  it  is  his  poetry 
that  posterity  will  take  note  of,  not  his  philosophy 
or  his  theory  of  life.    Tennyson  was  always  a 
poet.     He  had,  as  Mr.  Sidgwick  points  out,  "an 
inborn  instinct  for  the  subtle  power  of  language 
and  for  musical  sound,  that  feeling  for  beauty  in 
phrase  and  thought,  and  that  perfection  of  form 
which  taken  all  together  we  call  poetry.    And  he 
is,  like  Virgil  and  Milton,  a  true  son  of  the  Greeks." 
And  besides  being  a  master  of  melodious  verse  he 


Tennyson  Centenary  31J 

was  essentially  the  Poet  of  the  people,  because 
he  was  all  his  life  extremely  English  and  patriotic 
and,  hating  "  the  falsehood  of  extremes/'  he  was 
able  to  voice  the  common  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  the  average  Englishman  in  language  which 
though  stately  was,  as  a  rule,  easily  intelligible, 
and  he  liked  to  write  for  the  people.  No  publica- 
tion of  his  own  gave  him  so  much  pleasure  as  the 
sending  out  as  a  present  to  the  troops  in  the 
Crimea  a  thousand  copies  of  The  Charge  of  the 
Light  Brigade  because  he  heard  that  the  men  liked 
it.  He  was  a  hearty  advocate  for  a  nation  in  arms ; 
and  to  one  of  the  chief  promoters  of  the  Volunteer 
movement  he  wrote,  over  fifty  years  ago,  "  I 
most  heartily  congratulate  you  on  your  having  been 
able  to  do  so  much  for  your  country,  and  I  hope 
that  you  will  not  cease  from  your  labours,  until 
it  is  the  law  of  the  land  that  every  male  child  in  it 
shall  be  trained  to  the  use  of  arms/'  He  was  also 
a  hearty  advocate  for  drawing  closer  the  bonds 
between  the  Motherland  and  the  Colonies,  about 
which  he  vehemently  disagreed  with  his  friend 
Gladstone.  For  a  thoroughly  English  poem  what 
can  beat  this  ?  which  is  the  first  poem  of  Tennyson's 
that  Wordsworth  ever  saw. 


You  ask  me,  Why,  tho'  ill  at  ease, 
Within  this  region  I  subsist, 
Whose  spirits  falter  in  the  mist 

And  languish  for  the  purple  seas. 

It  is  the  Land  that  freemen  till, 

That  sober-suited  Freedom  chose 

The  Land,  where  girt  with  friends  or  foes 

A  man  may  speak  the  thing  he  will. 


312  Introductions  to  the  Poets 

A  land  of  settled  government, 

A  land  of  just  and  old  renown, 
Where  Freedom  slowly  broadens  down 

From  precedent  to  precedent. 

Mons.  Andr6  Chevrillon,  in  his  recent  book  The 
English  Spirit,  says  that  what  is  most  character- 
istic of  the  English  is  first  the  Spirit  of  action, 
secondly  the  spirit  of  poetry. 

Tennyson  knew  how  one  influences  the  other  and 
that— 

The  song  that  nerves  a  nation's  heart 
Is  in  itself  a  deed. 

He  was,  as  I  have  said,  singularly  sensitive 
to  criticism,  and  particularly  to  the  charge  of  pla- 
giarism, or  borrowing  his  words  and  ideas  from 
others.  He  complained  to  me :  "  The  critics 
won't  allow  me  any  imagination  ;  they  take  a  line, 
'  meanings  of  the  homeless  sea/  and  say,  '  moan- 
ings,'  Horace  ;  '  homeless,'  Shelley.  Churton  Col- 
lins makes  me  borrow  expressions  from  men  I 
never  even  heard  of.  But  of  course  the  same 
things  are  seen,  in  all  ages,  and  naturally  described 
in  the  same  language.  In  my  last  volume,  in  The 
Progress  of  Spring,  I  said  : 

The  starling  claps  his  tiny  castanets. 

The  other  day  I  saw  it  in  a  recent  novel ;  they  will 
say  I  borrowed  it ;  but  I  wrote  that  line  fifty  years 
ago." 

To  me  those  walks  over  the  heath  at  Blackdown, 
or  talks  in  the  summerhouse  at  Farringford,  were 
an  unspeakable  delight.  I  especially  cherish 
the  memory  of  one  meeting  when  the  Poet  was  near 


Tennyson  Centenary  313 

his  eightieth  year.  Dean  Bradley  was  staying 
with  him,  and  he  said  to  me,  "  How  wonderful 
he  is  !  I  am  the  younger  man,  but  he  walks  me  off 
my  legs."  After  lunch  we  were  all  looking  at  the 
phonograph  which  Edison  had  sent  him,  and  at  his 
son's  suggestion  he  spoke  some  of  his  own  lines  into 
the  machine.  The  Dean  had  selected  the  passage, 
and  we  listened  to  the  sonorous  tones,  and  saw 
the  markings  being  made  by  the  needle  on  the 
waxen  cylinder  ;  and  then,  sitting  down  all  close 
together,  by  the  window  of  the  little  upstairs 
room,  we  heard  the  phonograph  give  back  the 
lines ;  the  Poet  listening  with  amusement  to  his 
own  voice  speaking  to  him. 

Our  last  meeting  was  in  the  garden  at  Farring- 
ford,  in  the  summer  of  1892.  On  October  6  of  that 
same  year,  with  the  bright  moonlight  streaming 
on  to  the  bed  where  he  lay,  and  with  a  volume  of 
his  beloved  Shakespeare  in  his  hand,  he  passed 

To  where,  beyond  these  voices,  there  is  peace. 

On  October  12  I  followed  in  that  solemn  (I 
cannot  call  it  sad]  procession,  for  it  all  seemed 
such  a  fitting  termination  to  a  splendid  life,  which 
bore  him  to  his  rest  in  Westminster  Abbey. 


printed  by  BUTLER  &  TANNER,  Promt  $nd  London 


Ube  pocfcet  %ibrar\? :  ©live  Boohs* 

32W0,  olive  cloth  gilt,  is.;  olive  lambskin  gilt,  vs.  net,  per  volume. 


ARNOLD  (Mat.} ;  Poems. 

A  YTO  UN :  Lays  of  the  Scot- 
tish Cavaliers.  256  pp. 

BROWXING  (E.  B.) :  Poems. 
336  pp. 

BROWNING  (/?.):  Dramatic 

Romances   and  Lyrics.    254 

pp. 

BYRON:  Childe  Harold's  Pil- 
grimage. 320  pp. 

Werner.    256  pp. 

CAMPBELL:  Poetical  Works. 

320  pp. 
COLERIDGE:      Poetical 

Works.    320  pp. 
CO  WPER  :  The  Task.    256  pp. 
DANTE:    Inferno ;    tr.  by 

LONGFELLOW.  320  pp. 
• Purgatorio  ;    tr.    by   same. 

320  pp. 
Paradiso ;  tr.  by  same.     320 

pp. 

EMERSON:  Poems.    320  pp. 
GILBER  T:  Fifty  Bab  Ballads. 

320  pp. 

GRAY :  Poems.    256  pp. 
HA  R  TE  (Bret) :  Poems.  320  pp. 
HAY:  Pike  County  Ballads. 

1 56  pp. 

HEMANS :  Poems.    256  pp. 

HERBER  T:  The  Temple.  236 

pp. 
HOLMES  (O.    W.):     Poems. 

384  pp. 

HOOD :  Comic  Poems.    384  pp. 
Serious  Poems.    384  pp. 

K  E  A  T  S  :  Selections  from 
Poetical  Works.  256  pp. 

LANGBRIDGE :  Ballads  and 
Legends.  436  pp. 

LOCK  HART  :  Ancient  Span- 
ish Ballads.  320  pp. 

LONGFELLOW:  Birds  of 
Passage, 

, —  Divine  Tragedy. 


LONGFEL  L O  W:  Evangeline  ; 
Miles  Standish. 

Flower  de  Luce  ;  Masque 

of  Pandora,  etc. 

Golden  Legend. 

Hiawatha. 

Hyperion. 

Latest  Poems. 

New  England  Tragedies. 

Spanish  Student. 

Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn. 

Translations  ;        Songs  ; 

Sonnets. 

Voices  of  the  Night. 

M  A  C  A  U  L  A  Y  :    Lays   of 

Ancient  Rome,  Ivry,  and  The 

Armada.     256  pp. 
MILTON:  Paradise  Lost.  320 

PP. 
MOORE :  Irish  Melodies.    256 

pp. 

Lalla  Rookh.    192  pp. 

MORRIS  (Sir  Lewis}  :  Poems. 

320  pp. 
ROGERS  :  Poems.    330  pp. 

SCOTT  (Clement)  :  Lays  and 
Lyrics. 

SCOTT  (Sir  W.) :  Lady  of  the 

Lake.    256  pp. 
Lord  of  the  Isles.      256 

pp. 
Marmion.    320  pp. 

SHELLEY:     Early    Poems. 

320  pp. 
SIMS :    Dagonet    and    other 

Poems.    392  pp. 

TA  LFO  URD:  Tragedies :  with 
Sonnets  and  Verses.     320  pp. 

WHITTIER :  Poetical  Works. 

272  pp. 
WILLIS:     Poems.     320  pp., 

with  4  plates. 

WORDSWORTH  :       Early 
Poems.    256  pp. 


THE    MUSES'    LIBRARY 

Uniform  -with  this  volume. 

ARNOLD  (Matthew) :  Poems.  LAURIE  MAGNUS 

Dramas  and  Prize  Poems. 

BEDDOES.  RAMSAY  COLLKS 

BLAKE-  W.  B.  YEATS 

Book  of  Praise  (The).  ROUNDELL  PALMER 

BROWNE,  of  Tavistock.  GORDON  GOODWIN 

BROWNING  (R.).  O.BROWNING.    2  vols. 

Dramatic  Works  and  Dramatis  Personae. 

CAMPION.  PERCIVAL  VIVIAN 

CAREW.  A.  VINCENT 

CHATTERTON.  H.  D.  ROBERTS.     2  vols. 

CLOUGH.  F.  T.  PALGRAVB 

COLERIDGE  (Hartley).  RAMSAY  COLLES 

COLERIDGE  (S.  T.)  RICH.  GARNETT,  C.B. 

CRASHAW.  Canon  BEECHING 

DARLEY.  RAMSAY  COLLES 

DONNE.  Prof.  GEORGE  SAINTSBURY.    2  vols. 

DRUMMOND,  of  Hawthornden.  W.  C.  WARD.    2  vols. 

GAY.  J.  UNDERBILL.     2  vols. 

Golden  Treasury  of  American  Songrs  and  Lyrics. 
HARTE  (Bret):  Poems. 

HERRICK.  A.  C.  SWINBURNE.    2  vols. 

INGELOW  (Jean):  Poems. 
JOHNSON,  GOLDSMITH,  GRAY,  and  COLLINS. 

Colonel  T.  METHUEN  WARD. 

KEATS.  ROBERT  BRIDGES.    2  vols. 

LYALL  (Sir  A.  C.) :  Poems. 

Lyra  Germanica.  C.  WINKWORTH 
MARLOWE  :  Dramatic  Works.  DYCB 
MARVELL  :  Poems,  i  vol.  ;  Satires,  x  vol.  G.  A.  AITKEN 
MOORE  :  Irish  Melodies.  STEPHEN  GWYNN 
MORRIS  :  (Sir  Lewis):  Poetical  Works. 
MORRIS  :  (Win.).  J.  DRINKVVATER 
Jason :  Earthly  Paradise,  2  vols. 

Defence  of  Guenevere  and  other  Poems. 

PALGRAVE  (F.  T.):  The  Golden  Treasury. 
PATMORE,  Coventry  ALICK  MEYNELL 

PEACOCK  :  Poetical  Works.  R.  BRIMLEY  JOHNSON 

POE :  Poetical  Works.  J.  H.  INGRAM 

PROCTER  (Adelaide) :  Legends  and  Lyrics.     " 
ROSSETTI  (D.  G.) :  Early  Italian  Poets. 

RUSKIN  :  Poems.  G.  K.  CHESTERTON 

SIDNEY  (Sir  Philip) :  Poems.  J.  DRINKWATER 

TENN YSO  N:  Poetical  Works  :  1830-1863.     ' 
THOMSON  :  The  Seasons.  EDMUND  GOSSE 

The  Castle  of  Indolence  and  other  Poems.  H  D.  ROBERTS 

VAUGHAN.  Canon  BEECHING.    2  vols. 

WALLER.  G.  THORN  DRURY.     2  vols. 

WH ITE  (Kirke).  J.  DRINK  WATER 

WHITTIER  :  Selections.    Introduction  by  HOWARD  HODGKIH 
%•  Other  volumes  to  follow. 


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